MOON DRIVING

Champaign, Illinois

I have been totally touched by the send off I've received by friends and family.  Susan, my friend of nearly forty years, has kept the countdown all week.  She gave me the official sendoff with a mid-morning breakfast at Shake and Bake (Steak n Shake) in Knoxville, TN before I headed north.

The night before I left, sister-in-law Carol, called for a long chat, sending me off with her best wishes and blessings and great anticipation of our time together in Flagstaff in a few weeks.

In Lexington,  KY I went by the Honda dealer where I purchased my car, to collect my free car wash.  And because there was a note on the sales contract saying the purchase was contingent upon cookies, and because I thought Awesome Adam, the salesman, might decide to repossess my car, I delivered homemade cookies to him.  He knew from the get go a few weeks ago that I needed a car for this trip, so he too provided a send off for me with a hug in the dealership parking lot.

Then there was hospitality and visiting with son Fred and wife Shawna in Lexington and Winchester and pizza at Joe Bologna's.  Tonight I'll be with daughter Sarah and husband Ed for a few days in Clinton, IA.

I think the trip will really begin for me when I leave Iowa and the familiarity of friends and restaurants and places I've stayed before, and set off into new territory.

This morning I stopped at Hardee's for my last ham biscuits -- and wouldn't you know they were two for $2.50!!  I enjoyed, knowing there won't be any more until I return to the South at the end of September.  Yes, country ham biscuits are one of the things I love about the South.

A gorgeous full moon guided me west towards Louisville in the early morning darkness, even though dawn was beginning to break behind me.  And I thought about Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon and his death a few days ago.  And again, I imagined him and others walking there and looking back at us here on earth -- and yet I can hardly imagine it.

As daylight came and the moon disappeared from my view, a hint of a rainbow appear in the south -- another good sign for the beginning of my travels.  I wish it has been a full rainbow crossing over the highway in front, but a hint was enough -- I knew the rest was there, even though I could not see it.

My first scenic route was called Indiana Hill and Dale  in the road trip book -- and it was truly that:  a two lane road, hilly and curvy in places, winding among the farms and fields and cows and horse.  Some corn was already dry on the stalk, some stalks were still green.  When I stopped in Salem, IN at McDonald's for a short break, I checked the menu -- and indeed there were no ham biscuits, not even city ham.  I didn't expect them to disappear until Iowa.  But  this trip is not about eating what I can get at home, it's about trying new things.  So in Nashville, IN I had the famous fried biscuits and homemade apple butter at the Nashville House.  Brown cinnamon, not cinnamon red hots, dominated the apple butter.  Truly wonderful.

The photos below are from Story, IN -- an historic corner at a bend in the road.