Feb 01, 2010 - MI to KY

Traffic on I-75 wasn't bad at all today, but it's a Monday, maybe that makes a difference, I don't know. Our buddy Mike lent us a book called "Along I-75" which is a mile-by-mile guide to the freeway from Detroit to the Florida border, with all sorts of valuable information. It's sort of like a AAA Trip-Tik, but each page, which covers about a half hour of drive time,  has all sorts of valuable information on it, like history of the area, emergency cutoffs, and speed trap locations.

Shortly after entering Ohio, we noted that the area we were entering was formerly known as "The Black Swamp." At one time the area was "an evil boggy quagmire of black muck which sucked pioneers to their knees, and if the animals and insects did not get them, then malaria probably would." Thankfully there's no longer any chance of black muck eating you alive, but I think some of the potholes in the Toledo area could have swallowed us whole. Bah-da-boom! Thank you.

Florence Mall, Y'all

Passing by a giant mall in Florence, KY, we noticed a water tank that had "Florence Y'all" painted on it. How friendly, we thought. But it turns out that the paint job originally said "Florence Mall". Many local businessmen objected to the public water tower being used as an advertisement for the mall merchants, so it was decided that the tower would be repainted. Except they couldn't come up with the money to repaint the whole thing, so they just changed the "M" to "Y" and called it good.

Even though we have the rPod with us, for our first night here in Richmond, KY, we've decided to stay in a motel room because they actually have more snow here than we do back home, and it's supposed to get a bit chilly tonight. So before we checked in we decided to go downtown and try a restaurant we read about in this book. We weren't sure where to park but we saw there was a visitor's center only a block or so away from the restaurant, so we headed for that. Except we didn't find out until we were way, way, down inside the visitor's center driveway that it was a dead end, with only angle parking, and the building didn't look like it was open, and the only turnaround was blocked by a city pickup truck. So there we were. Backing up about a quarter mile to the entrance, and then trying to back out onto the busy street would have gotten ugly real quick. So we just sort of worked the whole truck/trailer back and forth, back and forth, and by driving partially on the lawn we were able to get turned around and headed back out. Good thing the trailer is only 17' long. But we found out the restaurant was closed, anyway. 

The hotel we're at, Richmond Inn, is very nice, clean and new looking. Plus it has a "dremium" pillowtop mattress. It was our second choice, though. We had another place picked out nearby, but almost every online review we read mentioned either "bedbugs" or "cockroaches". Tomorrow night we'll be at the KOA in Forsyth, GA.