Left Independence this morning after breakfast at the Waffle House--although Yvette tried to get us into a better place, the wait time and lack of adequate space for Buck nixed that.
Our first stop for gas (Buck being a prodigious drinker of that particular liquid) was in Boonesville, MO. Back in the 1840s and 1850s, this area was home to my Tucker ancestors. To Maddie, I pondered aloud why the Tuckers would leave the lush green prairies and gently rolling hills of Missouri for the dirty work of Quartz mining in dismal Bakersfield. Maddie replied with a quote from the television show Fairly Oddparents: "As they say in Missouri, I ain't never goin' back to Missouri."
Within a few hours of Boonesville, we arrived on the outskirts of St. Louis. Today was apparently the anniversary of the unrest in Ferguson, so we gave the north side of town a wide berth (thanks to Tricia, who is with us on this trip via various digital means). We drove beside the Gateway Arch then crossed the Mighty Mississippi into Illinois.
Across the bottom of the Land of Lincoln and Punky, we crossed the beautiful Ohio River into Kentucky. Seriously, the Ohio was wider and more interesting than the Mississippi. And I felt like I was crossing really into the South, from a free state to a slave state (OK, so that was 150+ years ago--it's how I think of things).
We've stopped for the night in Clarksville, just over the border into Tennessee. Yvette picked Mexican food for our last meal on the road. She decided we would walk to the place, which turned out to be quite an adventure in a land without sidewalks and crosswalks. Maddie feared for her status as a law-abiding citizen when we jay-ran across Wilma Rudoloh Biulevard, which is apparently the main drag of this burg. But we arrived at the restaurant safely and, fortified by a pitcher of Margaritas, made it back as well.
Now we are settled into the last hotel of our journey. Tomorrow's trip into Knoxville should only take just over three hours. My new home awaits....
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