Rock Road to Nashville

Leaving Galesburg our plan was to go straight south towards Kentucky and Tennessee, to go to Nashville. Since this is a long way to drive we were planning to stop for the night somewhere near Paducah (KY). We started of on the interstate to Peoria and Bloomington, to catch th I55 again towards St-Louis. A little while after Springfield we left the I55 in order to follow some smaller routes like the IL 129 through nice little villages and nice landscape. Farms farms and farms as far as you can see, with sometimes a few trees in between.
On the CD player we had the 2 Belgian (Rock) Hits CDs some of you received also. I hope you like it, it's a sample of 25 years of rock music in Belgium. Yes, some songs are really that old!! (Am I dating myself now??? LOL)
As we know the lyrics we were singing along with and pretty loud too. Some of these songs are even in our local dialect... Some of them were recorded in a bar in our town, and some were recorded during a yearly rock festival in summer held in the historic city center where we live. We were actually present at one of the recorded concerts, so maybe you can even hear us on the CD!! hihi :-))
We had no choice but to entertain ourselves because the rain kept following us. Again!! Jan even checked whether some lunatic attached the dark rain clouds to the back of our car!!

We always thought Metropolis was a made up town for the Superman movie, but no... it really exists!! A sign welcomed us to the hometown of Superman, hahaha!!! We are now also Superman and Supergirl, and I've got the pictures to prove it too!!! LOL
At the local gas station there were these bigger than life cardboard images specifically for this purpose and we couldn't resist the urge... The pictures really are hilarious!! LOLOL

Talking of town names, we get the impression we are on a worldtrip rather than a USA trip. We saw signs for Ravenna, Rome, Ghent, Cairo, Vienna, Sparta, Little switzerland, Geneva, and more!!
And talking of signs along the raod... we keep on seeing this weird sign "Shoulder closed" or "no parking on shoulder". I sure hope people won't even try to park on my shoulder!! And I certainly don't have a clue how I should close my shoulder!! Haha!!
More funny signs: "Fines for moving violations"... HUH??? So what are we supposed to do there?? Not move??? But we're driving down the road to our next destination!!
Oh, you crazy americans!! LOL

I'm sure you'll remember how we laughed at the sign that said "FOOD - McDonalds", and to tell the truth we did stop at a McDonalds several times, but only to use the restrooms, never to eat. I'm sure you'll all agree that those restrooms are probably much more hygenic than most restrooms in a gas station!! These, unfortunately, sometimes require you to do "the stance" and I hope someone still has that story on file somewhere, coz it's hilarious but oh so true!! LOL
The self flushing toilets really scare the heck outta me, especially when you decide to "hover" over them instead of actually sitting down. Geesh!!! And why do most restrooms NOT have a coat hanger, or at least something where you can put your handbag??? I most certainly do not have any intention of putting my bag on the floor in such places!! So what am I supposed to do with it?? Put it on my head???? And my bag is such a large one too!! In one place there was a sign that said to use the coat hanger... but it was right next to the door handle!! That's too low even for my handbag (it's got a long shoulder strap), it would still sit on the floor, so let alone that you could hang your coat properly on that without it touching the floor!! Ugh!!! This is not really a typical US thing, it seems to me that this is a worldwide problem. Just one of my pet peeves.

To give you an idea of the kind of places we love to stop for a drink and a bite, there was this one place just before Dubois where we stopped. The car (yes, the Suzuki) was thirsty, and so were we and we could use a little bite too. So we pulled over at a really small gas station that was next to a kind of mini mart which also had some hot food and tables to sit at. It looked like we were back in time and Fonzie would come in any minute and slap the jukebox!! a real blast from the past!! They served a really good home made pizza slice too! Wonderful, places like this, that's what we wanted on this trip!! The real 'mom & pop' type of places instead of the big chains. :-))

Since the weather wasn't playing nice again, we didn't make as many detours from the interstate as we had planned first, so we made good time and passed Paducah in the early afternoon. We decided to skip staying there for the night. We drove all the way to Nashville that same day so we would now have 2 nights in Nashville instead of just one. And that turned out to be a good plan. :-))
We stopped at the Knight's Inn first, but the reception guy was really not friendly and wouldn't let us see the room first. We usually want to see it first and try if the wireless internet they advertise really works. He kept saying "yes it works in every room" but when we insisted "are you sure??" he didn't seem so convinced any more. And the fact that he didn't want to let us see the room and try the internet made us very suspicious. So we went across the street to the Days Inn, which was just a little bit more expensive, but sooooo much nicer!! The reception desk clerk was really friendly, it was no problem to see the room first and try the internet. So that's where we settled for the next two nights.
Sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite!!

Hugs,
Wezz