After finishing up a couple of hours having fun with Miss Mairin and my camera, it was time to head round the corner to a local camera store to see if I could replace the buggered F5. As I'm getting ready to leave, a Lamborghini Aventador turns up and parks right behind me. Well, of course we need a few shots of this rather rare beast. What I didn't plan on was getting a few…
Today's adventure starts at a beautiful park literally just down the street from the hotel...Highbanks Metro Park in north Columbus to meet up with Patrick and Suzette and the girls. A couple of weeks prior, I was watching the live stream of Mairin and Keelia's dance competition whilst working on five sets of tax returns in tax preparation hell. As I'm texting back and forth with Suzette, she says at one point that she wished…
As it was getting to be early evening, it was time to make a speed run along I-70 to the next waypoint north of Columbus OH. Along the way was a quick trip through downtown Indianapolis and then a conversation with Mom and Meghann about Hutsonville that allowed the Ohio state line to sneak up on me! After checking into the hotel, I was greeted with a completely different way of handling the breakfast. This…
Terre Haute IN gained a bit of notoriety in the news toward the end of Mr Trump's term when there was a rush on executing Federal prisoners on the only death row in the system who are housed in the US Penitentiary on highway 63 just before you get to the I-70 motorway. As you can imagine, it's not a particularly inviting place and the signs and vehicles surrounding it don't exactly suggest you ought…
I'm always joking with my Illinois cousins that I'm probably the most hopeless member of my father's side of the family when it comes to Illinois cred. After all, I wasn't born here and truth be told...I think I've maybe spent a month of my life in total in this Land of Lincoln. Apparently my Illinois credit ranking did go up a bit last year when I was forced to pay Illinois income tax on…
Owing to the late check-in, I wasn't particularly interested in the breakfast buffet at the hotel. So as I'm loading the Traverse at 1000 to start heading east, I noticed that breakfast wasn't going to be a problem. Across the car park was a place called "Lion's Choice". I remember Hannah mentioning on Facebook things she missed about St Louis whilst she was at Emerson College in Boston and this one ranked pretty high on…
Heading a bit more west and dipping quickly into Georgia and back into Tennessee which also was the crossing-point into the Central Time Zone, the mileage sign showed I was far closer to Nashville than I had imagined. That could mean only one thing...let's see if we can do the tour of the cousins and visit Grandma and Grandpa in southern Illinois and possibly make it all the way to St Louis where more cousins…
There are several attractions on Lookout Mountain which straddles the Tennessee and Georgia border but the one I was aiming for was Point Park at the summit which would offer the grandest view of downtown and the river from about 2000 feet MSL. The ascent is a twisty and occasionally harrowing journey up the mountain, often on very narrow surface streets. When you arrive at Point Park, you really can't miss the building with the…
After an early breakfast and loading of the cargo, it was time to head southwest toward Chattanooga proper with the idea of ascending to the summit of Lookout Mountain to visit Point Park. Chattanooga is at the heart of the Tennessee Valley Authority which is a New Deal-era agency that was responsible for revitalising the economy that was devastated by the Great Depression along the Tennessee River by building hydro-electric dams and generators (and later…
After a very satisfying lunch at Lexington BBQ, it was time to continue west into the mountains with a couple of stops along the way to Asheville to get royally reamed at the pump. Darn it...I knew I should have stopped at that one station in Mocksville! But no matter...it worked out well to do another splash and go at Black Mountain and give the Traverse a proper tank of the high-octane petrol before really…
