Day 31: St. Louis, Missouri, to Manchester, Tennessee

Wednesday 23 October – Some parts of this Elizabethan Progress I planned carefully, especially in the early stages as I had my flight to Fairbanks booked, and lots of friends who needed to know when, exactly, I’d be barging through their front doors.  Once I got back from Alaska, though, things got a lot more ad hoc.  There were deadlines, like Day 28 needed to be Kansas City, so I wouldn’t bump up against M.N.’s weekend guest and marathon partner.  Day 29 needed to be St. Louis, when three friends were all available for dinner.  Between Fairbanks and Kansas City, though, I mostly planned as I went along, and after St. Louis, I had no idea how I’d get home.  Via a slight northern curve, as recommended by Mapquest and a kind neighbor who wanted me to ‘give Indiana another chance?’  Or I could take an almost-as-short route through the Kentucky bluegrass.

But then A.K. dropped a note inviting me to Sarasota.  If only I weren’t so ready to be home, and so unwilling to add an extra thousand miles of driving to the trip.  I did not turn down the invitation right away, though; I’ve learned a thing or two about these signs from the universe.  At some point on Tuesday night, as I pondered whether to stay another day at M.N.’s before heading home, I suddenly realized with perfect clarity that only a fool would skip the chance to see A.K.’s new home in Florida, and have whatever adventures might offer on that journey.  So I wrote to warn her I’d be there in three days, enjoyed a late-night chat with Mr. N., and went to bed excited and content.

Zoo duck, safe from dogs.  One hopes.

Wednesday morning started with a revivifying wrestling match with the N’s pool cover, and then 30 minutes of swimming.  That’s right:  late October, swimming, outdoors, St. Louis.  The pool cover, like fancy, unburst-able bubble wrap, did a great job of keeping the water warm.  I ought to look into joining a swim club; I love it so.  Back in the house, showered and clothed and ready to go, I opened the freezer in their kitchen to pull out my cold packs, and saw a duck.  It was a gosh-darn entire duck, with all its plumage, frozen whole.  I suspect Mr. N. uses it to train the dogs, or something.  One of them shows promise as a hunter.

For me, it is very weird to see an entire duck, with all its plumage, in a home freezer.

All the big cats are beautiful to me, but there's something
about these rosettes - and the 'tear tracks' on cheetahs -
that's especially alluring.  I still don't understand why
some people want to own a wild cat like this at home.  Did
you not notice the claws?  The powerful jumping muscles?
The stretch and reach and powerful jaws?

I had booked a reservation at The London Tea Room a few days earlier, as they require advance notice to cut the sandwiches extra small.  With the decision to boot-scoot Sarasota-wards, I phoned in to move my meal to sadly early for tea, and then set off to the wondrous St. Louis Zoo.  The zoo is not only wondrous, but free to all (though the off-street parking is painfully pricey).  They have a well-regarded cheetah conservation and study program, and great displays, from American Wood Ducks (and American termites – I never bother with that exhibit) to Malayan Sun Bears; from the painfully unattractive Bat Eared Fox to the silly-looking Grevey’s zebra (sorry, but their rear ends?) to the magnificently beautiful jaguar.  You can look at the hippos both above and below-water, thanks to a well-placed and extremely sturdy glass wall.

My luck was in, and all the cats were out, mostly basking in the chilly sunshine – except the cheetahs, but I was booked to meet them up close in their native land in a few weeks, so that was okay.  I put my 24 zoo photos online; you can look at them here.  There was so much to see, and for the good of the animals they’re well spread out, so there I was, back on the phone, changing my teatime again.

I learned about The London Tea Room from someone posting on The Uncrushable Jersey Dress, where tea comes up a lot, and had been looking forward to visiting for about two years.  This is mostly because I love Tea The Meal – so soothing – but also significantly because this particular tea room’s menu says things like, “Strawberry Salad:  Fresh sweet strawberries tossed with mixed greens and pecans in a strawberry vinaigrette, garnished with honey goat cheese, made from the elusive wish-granting, peace-loving honey goats of Zembla.  No extra charge.  8.95 USD.”  Droll, yes?  Of course, I didn’t eat the salad, just miniature sandwiches, a scone and some shortbread.  But I did get a white tablecloth, and a proper napkin, which the lunch-eaters around me did not, and the scone was great.

Now, at my pace, the 1,000-mile drive to Florida warranted two nights Econolodging, and I had a few oddments of food for motel meals.  But I needed a loaf of bread.  I figured downtown St. Louis, which housed the tea room, would have an artisanal bakery somewhere close at hand.  This downtown was a lot like Kansas City’s; a retro-yet-timeless style, with lots of brownstone and brick.  However, while there were more hip cocktail lounges and sushi bars than seemed sustainable, bakeries were thin on the ground.  A couple of tea room patrons (the staff, apparently, commuted from elsewheres, and got their carbs in-house while working) recommended a restaurant that might help, and I set off on the search.

I found a lousy grocery store – corn syrup in everything, although cole slaw, peanut butter and bread do not need corn syrup – and, after that, an independent bookstore.  The bookstore clerk suggested the wine bar next door, which had a sister restaurant that baked bread in-house.  The wine bar suggested the sister restaurant, which was just a block away.  The sister restaurant, in the after-lunch lull, had a bartender who checked with the non-retail bakery next door and then proffered half a loaf of whole grain, sliced.  That, folks, is how we get the marketing done in St. Louis.

Au revoir, St. Louis -- photo taken one-handed out the sunroof, maintaining a very conservative following distance
behind that truck.  If you've never seen it, you might be surprised how beautiful the St. Louis Arch is.

Illinois farming country in autumn.

It was very cloudy and a bit chilly as I headed east into Illinois in the mid-afternoon.  The cornfields soon returned, but here the stalks were all dried up and dead, and frequently interspersed with stubble fields, bare fields, and fields with summer-green shoots of something unidentified poking from the earth.  These big, flat fields, under a huge sky, were all bordered by deciduous trees with green, yellow and deep purple-red leaves.  And they got pretty as I moved further southeast, and the clouds cleared, letting in the sunshine.  That was more what I’d gotten used to; I had absurdly good weather almost every day of my six-week trip, and overcast St. Louis came as a surprise.  But sunshiny Illinois reassured me – it’s St. Louis, not me.

Illinois, however, was making me drive 65 miles per hour.  After over a month of 70 and 75, I felt like I was plodding.  The mid-Atlantic area, though, where I live and will do most of my driving in another week, limits driving speed to 55 in most areas.  I had a momentary worry that I wouldn’t be able to hack it, but then remembered that it’s really, really rare that I’m trying to get 400 miles before bed.  So I figured I’d probably be okay.

There’s a note in my journal that reads, “sunlight on water.”  I don’t know why I wrote that.  I wish I did.  I bet the reason was very good.

Actually taken just outside St. Louis, but it gives an
accurate idea of the Illinois/Kentucky trees in late October.

I do remember the fields turning to trees, and trying to peer through the trunks – at a sedate 65, that’s manageable – to see whether there were fields behind.  And the trees turning back to fields, and the sign advertising a Giant Superman Statue in Metropolis, Illinois, at the southern border of the state.  I was not even vaguely tempted to stop for the Giant Superman Statue in Metropolis.

The southern border of Illinois is formed by the Ohio River, and I crossed the river, into Kentucky, via a long bridge across the wide river; it’s about three-quarters of a mile.  The sun was dropping into the water off to my right, and the bridge has two steel arches, one at the beginning and one at the end.  I think those elements have something to do with keeping the whole structure up.  They are very mechanical, very engineered, and yet often so very beautiful.  I know I gasped as each metal hump swooped up before me, with the river on fire to the west.  I want to go back and do that again someday.

In Kentucky, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln (as the welcome sign tells travelers), I had a moment of déjà vu.  The approach into Paducah, Kentucky, which looks too big for just 25,000 residents, was just like the approach into St. Louis from the west via 64/40; that mix of woods and offices and highway signs promising suburban comforts a short distance from the exit ramp.

In fact, one of the Food Next Exit signs included the logo for Showme’s, a restaurant I, who spent at least four weeks a year, and usually much more, in Missouri from 2004 through 2008, had never heard of before.  Missouri is famously the show-me state:  “I’m from Missouri,” you can say when you’re feeling skeptical, and if anyone seems confused you can add the kicker, “so you’ll have to show me.”  So why am I just finding out about this chain now, and in Kentucky?  Sadly, Showme’s doesn’t seem to have understood the original Missourian concept very well.  I’ve just looked up this chain, and it seems to be run on the Hooters model, with beer and wings on the menu and not much on the waitresses.  Cleavage wasn't what the Missouri people were necessarily demanding to see.

Yuk.  The National Quilt Museum seemed like a better bet.  Especially since seeing some of D.B.’s quilts (you remember D.B., back in Seattle) and hearing about her friend’s quilting machine.  However, it was 5:45pm, and I was unwilling to risk exiting, driving who knows how far to the museum, and finding out that it closed at 6:00.  Or wasn’t open on Wednesdays, or something.  But that makes another good reason to head back to the Illinois/Kentucky border country someday.

Other attractions I chose to skip included numerous vineyards.  There were a lot advertised on the highway signs in Illinois and Kentucky, but setting aside the whole drinking-and-driving question, when time is limited, I prefer to spend more of it on zoos, tea rooms, stubblefields and driving than on drinking midwestern wines.  Not that there aren’t probably some excellent ones – c.f. Augusta Winery, mentioned in the Day 30 post – just that there are probably a lot more sub-excellent ones, and often little to tell the difference until you’ve paid your five bucks for a tasting.

So drive I did, crossing counties via the Tennessee River, which wasn’t as broad as the Ohio, but still impressively wide.  I always play the license plate game in my head, albeit in a very distracted manner, when I’m on the road, and tonight in this Kentucky corner I noticed that the plates around me were overwhelmingly Illinois, Alabama and Tennessee, with the locals apparently busy in some other part of their state.  I wonder if that’s real, or if I wasn’t paying good attention (good enough to write a note about it, anyway), or if it was a one-time fluke.  Before I could solve the question, I noticed a billboard for Trail of Tears Park.  That would be another great place to explore, if it weren’t late, and I had a big stock of anti-depressants.  Seeing the sign on the highway, as an ‘attraction,’ was enough to shake me up a bit.  It’s like seeing a billboard advertising Dachau, or Nanking, or Hiroshima when you’re not expecting it, thinking about cheap motels and gulf-side beaches.  I do think it’s good for me to get jerked out of the quotidian and pleasant, and reminded of the too-frequent and brutal, but I doubt those will ever be experiences I actively seek.

Not long after, with no river, no warning, I was – blam – in Tennessee.  And Nashville was not far over the border, spiky and glittery and really rather elegant looking, especially in contrast to the billboards and chain stores of its outskirts.  I thought about stopping in the city for the night, so I could take a look around in the morning, but I was in no mood for urban cheap-motel prices.  Also, I really dislike the name ‘Murfreesboro,’ and wanted to get the town, not too far south of Nashville, behind me before I fell asleep.  About an hour past Nashville, I found a Quality Inn with Roman-style columns and friezes, a Sistine Chapel print, and a Grecian ruins print in the lobby, and a six-foot-tall Buddha-head fountain right outside.  I believe one of the Buddha’s powers is protecting travelers from irrational fears of Murfreesboro, which put me in the right place.