Still on the road…
NOTE: We forgot to post last night when we got in. We were so excited to be home, we unpacked dragged in the bags and just went to bed. This morning we got up returned the rental car, got the mail we’d had held, watered the garden (lost the lettuce while we were gone), and otherwise cleaned up from the trip. Tomorrow (Thursday) it will be back to the grind.
Didn’t get to post last night (Monday). We got into Terra Haute at about midnight or a bit later. We stayed at a Days Inn. I was so exhausted I just plain crashed. Hyperion managed to send some email and update a few people on where we were and then he turned in. I think we had lights off by 1 am (Hyperion here: It was 1 am because we changed time zones and I set our watches forward. From the time we entered the room, we we had the lights out within 15 minutes). Then we were up at 7 to start all over again. We hope to be home before midnight tonight (depending on how many stops we make along the way).
Yesterday (Monday), we stopped in St. Louis to see the Arch. We intended to just stop and take the tram to the top and then leave. Turns out they have a museum and two stores (Hyperion: Otherwise known as Money Suckers). Driving into the city, you catch a quick glimpse of the Arch and then it seems to disappear behind buildings, trees, bridge abutments, and other city architecture. When we actually turned to get to the parking lot and could see it — well, it’s so breathtakingly slim and shinning. I couldn’t believe there was a tram inside it. Then we walked up to the Arch. It’s huge. Tall. Overpowering but still slender and graceful — how do they get that tram in there. We paid for a ticket and caught the tram up. It’s more like a ferris wheel car and more or less goes up with a ratcheting motion as it changes angles within the structure. There’s a stop at the top and you can spend as much time as you wish there taking pictures out the small viewing windows. It’s over 600 feet high (think 60 story building — waving hands and simplifying like crazy). Lovely view of the city and river (with riverboat casino and helicopter pad).
After returning to the bottom level, we took a quick trip thorough the museum. It’s set up in concentric circles and as each circle moves out from the entryway it’s a different era until the modern era is the back wall. As you move around clockwise, the exhibits represent different concepts: Indians, soldiers, settlers, politics, etc, so that the whole forms a two dimensional space-time representation of the western expansion. There were way too many exhibits, plaques, material, and dioramas to see in the time we had so we took some pictures and hoped that the museum store would have a short booklet on the museum and it’s exhibits. I’ll save you the suspense, they didn’t. What’s up with museums? Most, if not all the museums (the historical ones mostly), never have books on their exhibits. I love museums and I usually buy the exhibit books so I can refer back to them at later times. Historical museums usually don’t have them. I guess they assume you’ll read the 40 billion non-fiction history books that they used to put the exhibit together. Not gonna happen. I want a booklet to show me what was there. Think of the money that museums, who are always looking for a revenue stream, could make from these. Again I ask, what are they thinking?.
We still dropped a bundle in the stores, mostly buying books for research, but let’s be honest: We also got fudge, root beer drops, and a few gifts for Christmas. Then it was time to hit the road again. Checking the clock, we found out our half-hour planned stay had stretch to nearly three hours. And we didn’t even stay to watch the official movie! Well, that set our on-the-road driving schedule back a bit. We’d originally planned to get past Indianapolis before stopping, but we still hadn’t eaten, and the road was long. So we stopped in Effingham for Pizza Hut. We had to check to make sure they were still open (damn time zones!), but all was well. The two of us made up half of the total customers. We had a Super Supreme Pizza and a nice conversation about the arch and, for some reason, the book, The Life of Pi. A good friend had lent it to us on CD and we loved it. Our friend … didn’t. Oh well, different tastes. So as we’re getting ready to leave, the cashier/waitress/server (she was pretty much the entire crew) asked if we were local or from away. We told her that we were heading home to Maryland. She nodded and said that was what she figured since nobody local ever came that late on a Monday night. So we chatted for a few minutes about cities and big towns, and departed happy and well stuffed.
We put in a book on CD to listen to. It’s Halo: Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund, read by Jonathan Davis, and will probably show up on SFRevu once we get through all the disks. It’s not as engaging as The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Book One: The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud, read by Simon Jones (which we listened to on the way to Denver). It’s strictly military SF with lots of buzz words and technojargon, and quite frankly, a few really unbelievable scientific premises necessary to make the plotline work. But it kept us awake and going for a while, which is more than I can say for a certain truck driver we got behind, who was weaving back and forth across the lanes, obviously trying to make that last couple of miles before pulling off for the night. I really wish he’d done it earlier as I didn’t dare pass him, since I didn’t know if I’d have a lane from one second to the next.
But we reach the Indiana Tourist Info Center, got the book of hotel coupons, and darted five miles up the road to Terra Haute, which is where this whole post started.
Now, after all this, we’re finally up to today where, guess what? We’re driving on the road … again! Currently we’re in Ohio, just approaching the West Virginia line, which is about an hour away. Just in case you’re traveling on I-70 through Columbus, don’t trust the signs, make sure you’re in the center lane to stay on I-70. Otherwise lanes appear and disappear and suddenly you’ll find yourself heading in the wrong direction. Not that it could ever happen to us, but just FYI.
After that, things began to blur. Coffee and soda will keep you going, but there’s nothing like the Appalachian mountains for sheer terror. The Rockies are probably worse, but we didn’t get up into them, so I’ll just have to live with slowly climbing 3000 feet and then diving back down at a 6% grade. Yeah, that will wake you up! We changed drivers near Cumberland Maryland and Gayle took the wheel for the last leg. That means she had to negotiate the construction on I-270 and the Beltway.