Thursday July 4th, 2013. Happy Independence Day Everyone!
“Boom”, “Bang", our night in St Louis was punctuated with loud blasts from what were either fireworks or gun shots. We’re not sure which. The good news is that there weren’t any casualties. In fact, we had a pretty good nights sleep in spite of the occasional blast. Today’s mission was to make it to Fayetteville, TN, which lay some 400 miles in front of us. Our route would take us on I-64 out of St Louis, into SW Illinois. We would pick up I-24 in Mt. Vernon, Illinois and head SE into Kentucky and on into Tennessee. We would pickup I-67 outside of Nashville and head SE into the lower half of Tennessee.
Everything was progressing so smoothly, it started out as another wonderful day with blue skies, mild temperatures and low humidity. Our streak of great weather would come to a dramatic end as we entered Nashville, TN. Well, our good fortune couldn’t last forever. Notwithstanding the rain, we made it to our friend’s home in the hills of Fayetteville, TN in about 8.5 hours with an 1.5 hour stop for lunch and some sight seeing.
It was pretty exciting for Elisa because we would be in 4 different States in one day. Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennesee. We would cross several large and swollen rivers, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Cumberland and a couple of others. We saw a great deal of farm land in all 4 states. We saw corn growing in almost every state we’ve been in starting with Colorado. It makes you appreciate just how bountiful this land of ours is. God Bless the farmers.
As we entered Southern Illinois, we began to see that there had been some substantial rain. The rivers were swollen and in many areas low lying areas were flooded. But for now, the weather remained great. Another thing we’ve noticed while travailing across this great land of ours is the unabashed use of superlatives – “come see the best..the greatest,..the largest…". As we approached the small town of Metropolis, IL, just the other side of Paducah, KY we saw a sign announcing “come see the worlds largest Superman statue"; located no less in a place called Metropolis. We had to pull over to see it. Low and behold, this small town boasts 2 draws to bring potential visitors the 4 or 5 miles off of the interstate. The first is a Harrah’s operated riverboat casino and the second is…..the worlds largest Superman statue. Is it really the largest? I don’t know, but at over 20 feet tall it is certainly the largest one Ive ever seen.
This town also boasts one of the “best" Superman museums – certainly the best (and only one) I’ve ever seen. This moment of serendipity in following the roadside sign proved to provide us with a very entertaining visit to a unique and well stocked museum dedicated to all things Superman. The displays start with several exhibits of actual and duplicate props used on the 1950s television program that so many of us can remember. Amongst the items on display were the magical eyeglasses that would so deftly disguise Superman as the mild mannered Clark Kent. They had to be good in order to fool a crack reporter like Lois Lane. The museum has a couple of the actual Superman costumes worn by George Reeve in the television series. The displays move on to other incarnations of Superman as depicted on television and the big screen. Here is a link to the rest of the pictures we took at the museum.
We had a great time visiting this little town.
We were quickly back on the road and made good time through KY. But as we rolled into Tennessee, we could see some ominous clouds in the distance. Sure enough, by the time we hit Nashville, we ran into some torrential rain. This made the going a bit slow but in the end we arrived safely.
We look forward to spending the next couple of days with our friend Jimmy.
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