Saturday we headed west towards Owensboro Kentucky. Nice easy drive through the western Kentucky countryside.
We stayed that night at the Diamond Resort, just outside of Owensboro, which was pretty full. There were lots of folks with golf carts and off road vehicles constantly driving around so it was quite noisy. That night there was a country and western singing contest held in the campground theatre so there was a general party atmosphere. Early Sunday morning (about 3:00 am) we got up to go to the restroom where there was a rather sad sounding fellow calling Ralph on the big white phone. Anyway, I digress...
There were two reasons for our stay in Owensboro.
The first was to lunch at the MoonLite BBQ which was featured as one of the national "shrines" in our BBQ Bible. Saturday is a buffet day which is obviously very popular because the place was packed. The buffet was mostly stuff neither of us were particularly interested in so we ordered some ribs and chicken with the regular sides such as potato salad and coleslaw.
It was all quite good but we both concluded that we prefer the atmosphere of places like those in, say, Lockhart, Texas. This was a bit too "restauranty". Not enough taxidermy.
We actually stopped in at Moonlite on the way to the campground so after lunch we continued on, got the trailer set up then headed back into town to go to reason number 2 for being in Owensboro... the International Bluegrass Museum. This place is really cool. For the most part it appears to be a shrine dedicated to Bill Monroe who grew up in the area (they had a special exhibit with a whack of information, pictures, video and audio from his era while we were there), but also features many of the other early Bluegrass stars such as Scruggs and Flatt, and others along with information on current day stars such as the 2011 Entertainer of the Year....
...and the 2011 Album of the Year...
We were the only ones in the museum so it was fun to push the buttons and listen to every one of the audio presentations featuring some truly great pickin'.
We ended up with 4 more great bluegrass cds as we left the museum store. The young lady in the museum also mentioned that the locals actually consider Monlight BBQ to be a bit touristy and that she preferred a place called Old Hickory. Old Hickory also has a location in Lexington which is recommended in one of our BBQ books. The museum lady had recommended the smoked chicken, so we drove off and found the restaurant and made sure it would be open the next day (Sunday). We were their first customers on Sunday morning at 10am, picked up a smoked chicken, slaw and potato salad to go and headed off for the day. When we stopped for the day we had the most delicious bbq/smoked chicken that I have ever had. We also bought some of their bbq sauce which is a Worcestershire sauce base with some tomato paste and peppers and secret spice mix - very runny, about the consistency of tomato soup - but very nice. Not really spicy, just nice.
Sunday we continued west into Illinois towards St Louis. Through western Kentucky and across Illinois we passed by mile after mile after mile of dried up cornfields as far as the eye can see. The drought has been absolutely devastating...
Here's a close up picture, of an ear of corn, that was on the CNNMoney.com website for an article on the worldwide impact the US drought is having on food prices...(corn prices up 30% in July)
Sunday night we stayed at the KOA in Benton, Illinois. Nice place with an excellent pool and good laundry facilities. After a refreshing swim and rest beside the pool to dry off, we no sooner left the pool area than a large tree branch fell landing about 4 feet from where we were sitting. Yikes! The break was likely a result of it being so dry for months on end.
We drove into Benton to get some gas and to have a look around. Pretty little town square with several antique and second hand stores. We wandered through a couple of the antique stores and Kris came away with a collector type vase, bowl and plate for almost nothing. Now we just have to get them home without smashing them during the remainder of our trip!
Monday we headed to St Louis, found the west side KOA and parked ourselves for 4 nights while we await the Thursday afternoon ball game between the Cards and Giants. Another nice cool pool! Something we need with the high 30sC temperatures we continue to get. That night we decided to try SuperSmokers BBQ for dinner. Again, decent ribs and chicken with the usual sides but also tried the tomato and cucumber salad... that we could do without!
Tuesday morning we headed into St Louis to get tickets to the Thursday ball game. Our desire for shade takes us once again to the nosebleeds but at least there is also some breeze up there. With the AAA discount, our tickets were all of $10 a piece. After picking up the tickets we wandered around the outside of Busch Stadium taking pictures of the various statues...
... and going to the team store to pick up souvenirs. That was nice being in there with very few other people compared to during the game when it is shoulder to shoulder.
Leaving the stadium we walked the 3 blocks or so down to the St Louis arch, the Gateway to the West...
We decided it would be cool to ride to the top of the arch and see the city from there. Well... we can only say that this is a "once in a lifetime experience"... as in "once is enough!". The ride up and back is 7 minutes, each way, in a cramped little capsule (they do ask if anyone is claustrophobic) then when we got to the top it was so crowded you could barely move. The windows are tiny little horizontal slits situated about thigh high to the average adult so you have to almost be a contortionist to be able to bend down and look out over the city. Besides that, there were lots of people trying to have their picture taken up there against the grey carpeted walls as a backdrop. What's the point? no way you could tell that they were way up there!. All in all, not a very rewarding experience. We elected to leave pretty well right away, as did another couple we rode up with as they were already at the door waiting for the next car to go down when we got back to the door. We did get one decent picture though, overlooking Busch Stadium...
Leaving the downtown area we drove to a neighbourhood known as The Hill, a mostly Italian area with lots of restaurants where we both had a nice chicken Parmesan lunch. After lunch Kris went sweater shopping at Skif, a funky sweater design and manufacturing place. She was determined to buy a Skif but the prices were considerably lower than she expected so ended up coming away with 3 nice ones because she couldn't decide amongst the three of them.
Wednesday was basically an errands shopping day.
Thursday was ball game day. While at the stadium on Tuesday we found that there is a metro stop right at the stadium and the most westerly stop is about half way to where we were staying. We decided to try the metro so looked at their website to confirm times etc. Unfortunately, Brian, the math whiz somehow calculated that if we caught the 12:20 pm metro, which would take us 30 minutes to get to the stadium, we would get there in plenty of time to see the start of the game at 12:45 pm... let's do the math...12:20 + 30 = 12:50... hmmm... in retrospect it seems like we might arrive late... and we did. It was the bottom of the first when we walked into the stadium and just missed Carlos Beltran's home run giving the Cards a 2-0 lead. RATS!
Anyway, this was a tough game. Our home team mojo dictated that the Cards should win and Kris's favorite team mojo dictated that the Cards should win...BUT Brian's favorite team in the National League is the Giants so what to do??? Well, Brian took one for the team, left his favorite team mojo at home (as Kris suggested he might do), heck he even wore a Cardinals tee...
... and in the end the home team Cardinals came out ahead 3-1 leaving our record for this trip at 6-2 in favor of the home team... Brian now has a nice red Cardinals t-shirt which he can feel free to wear to the BBQ restaurants where the red sauce often goes astray.
All in all it was a good game and our nosebleed seats turned out to be fabulous with a great view of the field and out over the city, including the arch...
Friday we packed up from St Louis and headed for Columbia, Missouri our stop for the night and end of the week. Another back roads drive past more dried up cornfields than one would care to see. We had enough time, after setting up the trailer at the Cottonwoods RV Park to do a bit of a drive around. Columbia is a college town with, what appears to be, a very vibrant downtown area... nice! After our brief tour we stopped at a grocery store for dinner items then on the way back to the RV park, we went into a Menards (never been in one of these) which has to be the largest home hardware type of store we have ever been in. This place is huge. They even sell towels and clothing. Kris figured it's because folks go in there and get lost so after a couple of days need these things to freshen up a bit in order to keep looking around! The selection of lumber and other home handyman must haves...WOW! BUT... no room in the wee trailer :-(
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