At 7:00 this morning, Sascha starts throwing herself down on the floor and sighing really big. I mean, really big. I’m surprised the air isn’t sucked out of the room. That’s her sign she is tired of watching me sleep. It’s time to put her outside. Yeah, she’s right. I’ve probably slept enough. I drag myself out and get ready for the morning.
I get the paper, make coffee, and settle in to read while everyone sleeps. I turn on “Your Roots” to see what Tuesday night’s show was. I love this show. It’s all about genealogy, DNA, and family stories. This is something I love to do myself. Anderson Cooper, Ken Burns, and Ann Deveare Smith are the guests. There were great stories and great family trees.
Rick wonders out of his room and says hello. It’s time for him to get ready and get out of the house of his first class of the day. He gets his breakfast, dresses and looks out of the window. Then he dashes out of the back door without a word. Wait! This isn’t good.
Sascha has been digging in one of my flowerbeds again! She seems to get a denning instinct in the fall and wants to create a huge body hole to hide in. Just not in my flowerbed!! She knows she has done wrong. Rick brings her in and she heads straight for Rich’s desk. She is hiding in her inside den.
I got and find shoes so I can repair the damages. Rick waves from his car as I get a shovel to scrape up the dirt. The patio is covered in loose dirt. Sascha managed to dig below the tree stump that is hidden under the dirt in that bed. She even dislodged the bricks around the edge. Darn her!
I use the shovel to scrap up what dirt I can return to the bed. I shuffle dirt around until I have it filled in. Then I go looking for plywood to lay down on the flowerbed. I stack the loose bricks all around the plywood and over the loose dirt that I didn’t cover. I’ll know she’ll find a way in, but I hope it won’t be easy. Darn her! I said that already!
By now, Rich is up and moving around. He has showered and is working on his packing. He never packs ahead. He waits until the morning of to figure out what goes into his bag. I guess guys have an easier time of packing. I head off to the shower and then finish up my packing. Last of all, I pack my computer and electronics. How would I write this blog without my computer?
Next step is to get everything into the car. At this point, Sascha is out from under the desk and at the back door competing to get out to the car. She so wants to go and not get left behind with Rick yet again. Sorry, girl. There’s no room for you at King Biscuit Blues Fest. We manage to get by her and get everything transferred to the car.
Sascha gets a big hug and a pat on the head. Maybe next year. Then we head out to Island Café for breakfast. There are maybe three tables of people. This should be easy. We order our food and get our mugs filled with steaming coffee. Ah, that’s better. Time to start this vacation right.
Right after we run by the credit union at work to get Rich’s debit card straightened out. He tried to activate it over the phone without any luck. Who knew you would need to know 10 different things about your life and what you answered as security questions 2 years ago! Luckily, it took 5 minutes to fix. Cash in hand, we were ready for the big highway.
We got onto 290 and down to 355 before we knew it. The GPS was telling us to stay on 355 to 80 and take 57 down through Illinois. It had been quite a while since I had gone down that way. The traffic was light with only a few trucks along the way. It was almost like a weekend or a holiday.
Auto Nag on the car was driving me crazy though. The car wants to stop you from hurting yourself or even getting yourself into a possible situation. It slows the car down when you get within so many feet of a car. It tries to stop when you speed up. I was actually getting in the way of traffic with the cruise control turned on. I turned off Auto Nag and just dealt with the features on cruise control. That meant turning off the cruise when I need to stay up with traffic and avoiding clogging up a situation. Darn car!
We made a pit stop in Effingham. This was to get Rich coffee for his missed 2:00 break. Yesh! When I got back on the highway, I got behind a motorcyclist who was very fond of expressing his frustrations. He took his hands off the bar, put them on his head and then raised them to the sky. I could hear him say, “WTF” with his body language. As I followed him, he continued to make very large gestures to the car in front of him. This was the car that refused to move out of the left lane into the right lane to let others pass him, including me. So I definitely felt the motorcyclist’s frustrations, too. He was communicating his feelings quite clearly, but I must have been the only one watching.
Traffic opened up and we all got around the slow guys. When did the left lane become the driving lane! Is that in the Rules of the Road handbook? Saw a lot of cars taking up space in the left lane today. If this sounds like you, know that I’m shaking my head at you for the error of your ways.
We went down the road some more. Finally, we got to the turn off to head toward Cape Girardeau. Then I look down and realize I’m almost out of gas! How did that happen? We got the 5 miles to the exit and there is a gas station there! Thank goodness. Rich went in to pay and I realized I parked on the wrong side of the tank.
After 6 months of owning this car, you’d think I’d understand where the gas tank is. According to Rich, the girl behind the counter said she would wait to punch in the island until I turned around. He looks out of the window to see me jump in and turn the car around to face the other direction. I guess they’ve had some people not be very successfully at this. As someone in the station said they thought they would have to move the gas pump island for someone turning around once. That’s crazy. I’m very good at the quick turn. No problem.
As you approach the Mississippi down this winding back road, you go through a lot of bottom land. There are a lot of private and public hunting clubs down in these lowlands. I guess that’s big business here. They convince people from other places to come in to hunt. They act as guides, provide you with the opportunity, and collect your money for making you a successful hunter.
We made it to the Mississippi River. I heard on my record show this morning that people from Mississippi actually say Missippee. That’s like the people from Louisville who can say it one of 5 different ways. My favorite is still the one we all learned from the Bank of Luval commercials growing up. Luval. Or as my friend, Kim, says: Put your fist in your mouth first and then say Louisville.
So anyway, we cross the really cool suspension bridge over the Mississippi River. It looks much better at night when it is all lit up. Rich is trying to take pictures out of the window. I don’t think they will turn out that well. Maybe we can get better pictures tonight from the river walk.
We find the hotel and ask for recommendations since we found that Buckner’s is closed. Rich was trying to find the address when he ran across an article that they were closed because they didn’t pay their employee taxes to the government. What a shame. They had great food and great beer. That’s really hard to come by. The IRS doesn’t look lightly on tax offenses. We heard about the Broadway Biergarten and Port Cape. OK, that would do.
We left to check out the Broadway Biergarten. On the outside, the bar was decorated in Bavarian flags and blues. That was a good sign. Inside, there were a lot of taps and a lot of bottles on display. The beer list was impressive and took up two pages. Rich got a Vitus weitzenboch. His second beer was Mother’s Oktoberfest. Mother’s is a local brewery. He got that one after he got a sample of it and the Hubrew Oktoberfest. Mother’s won out.
We got dirty fried pretzel bites, which are rolled in wing sauce before frying. Along with this, we each got a burger. The food was nothing to write home about, but it did fill you up.
The bar is an old converted department store from around the early 1900s. The ceiling was original tin. Tables were long with benches along both sides. It was more beer tent style than restaurant. Even the display areas in the front windows had tables and benches. I can image the place being full and the best drinkers and partiers are on display.
We drove down to the river to walk along the river walk. But first, we noticed a small bar called LoDo. It advertised craft beers. We went in to check it out. The place was nice, but did smell of cigarette smoke. I’d say it was a typical old style bar in a small town. They are in the process of expanding and so they didn’t have any taps working. It was only bottled beers. Rich decided to stay anyway.
The girl behind the bar was willing to tell us about what she had. One of the patrons was extremely vocal and jumped in with what he knew. The owner came in and we ended up having a conversation about all of the beers in the coolers and why one over another. The owner brought out several choices and Rich decided on the Piney River Brewery’s Black Walnut Wheat. It was along the same line as an English brown nut ale. It was pretty good.
We talked about the bar and its décor. The patron had been coming into that bar since 1988 and had seen it change over the years to many different types of bars. The owner has several original ad signs up on the top of the wall. Some of them are worth some money, but it sounded like they will stay for a while.
There were three sets of shelves set up on the side wall with beer cans. Apparently, the cans were there when the owner took over the bar. Some of them were pretty old and most brands don’t exist anymore. He had some original Falstaff cans with beer in them upstairs in storage. He said they were worth a lot of money on eBay. Who would pay for Falstaff like that?
We headed out and down to the river walk. The moon was shining across the water. I took a picture, not expecting to get anything. It looked pretty good. It would be a perfect Facebook picture. Rich got some good pictures of the suspension bridge all lit up. It would have been great with the moon behind it. Oh well, probably too early in the night.
So it’s after 8:00 at this point. Time to go back to the hotel, write up this blog for the day, and relax. Tomorrow, we headed down to Tunica, MS where our hotel for the next few days is located. Then we’ll check out our surroundings. On Friday, we‘ll put in our first full day of music on the Mississippi. Saturday should be the same. Sunday, we plan to go to Clarksdale for the Cat Head mini blues fest and spend the night. Can’t wait for that.
Good night!
