At Least We Saw Superman...

So Berry has instituted a "use it or lose it" vacation policy and the deadline is the end of the fiscal year, or Sept. 30th, which meant that I had 9 days to burn during the (then) next 6 weeks. 

I called Mom and told her to start planning the genealogical trip to Alabama she's been talking about for years.  She got out her atlas and started planning.  I scheduled to take off the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before Labor Day.  We packed up the Rav with our suitcases, some bottled water, and some snacks.  Before we hit the road, Gnarley informed us that he had been eavesdropping on our plans and wanted to go with, so the three of us hit the road. 

Before we could leave Evansville, though, we had to hit McD's for our obligatory Sausage McMuffin for the road.  As we left McDonald's, there was a small kerfluffle over whether we were going to go through Kentucky (I just assumed) or the Illinois way (Mom's thoughts).  Since I had told Mom that she could navigate (instead of me following the directions from Samantha, the GPS - I've discovered there seems to be a wee bit of jealousy between the two of them), I yielded to her directions and we hit the road.

The Illinois way involved us basically following the path we always took to visit my Grandmothers - Dad's mom, in Eddyville in Pope County, IL; and then Mom's mom in Metropolis in Massac County, IL.  By the time we got to Metropolis, everyone had to go wee.  Gnarley saw a couple of "Home of Superman" signs and refused to let us leave town before he had a chance to meet his hero.


Mom and I tried to explain the whole fictional character thing, but Gnarley was having none of it.  He'd even packed his lucky Superman cape!  How could we say "NO!"?

Turns out the town had enough Supes-related stuff that Gnarley was very pleased and, after a couple of photo-ops, willingly got back into the car.

Then we got back on the road and made it through Kentucky without mishap.

Now, you may recall from a previous episode (circa 2013 maybe?) that Mom has this childhood friend who lives in Tennessee.  Turns out my navigator had sneakily planned our trip to go right through the friend's town!  It was on our way there that I discovered another one of Mom's ulterior motives for this trip - to scope out all the Sonic's in the South.  But first, some background....

See, we have a Sonic Drive-in Restaurant in Evansville and a while ago, like any good drug dealer, I got Mom hooked on their frozen limeades.  This summer, quite by accident, we discovered that in the summer, Sonic sells frozen sweet tea in one of three flavors, lemon tea, black cherry, and wildberry.  Wildberry frozen sweet tea was now our addiction of choice.  However, during an early Saturday morning conversation with the manager of our local Sonic, he told me that he only had so much of the wildberry and black cherry flavoring and he couldn't order any more.  Subsequently, we hit the Sonic as often as we could until we learned that... sniff... the wildberry stuff was all gone.  They do have blackberry flavoring that will do in a pinch, but Mom and I were now going to suffer through the rough winter....Sigh.

So flash back to our trip.  Keeping in mind that we're driving on all these blue roads (i.e., not interstate) and going through every tiny town in western Tennessee, we were going through one town (I don't remember which one, but it was before we hit Trenton, TN, because that town was memorable in its own right) and we saw that they had a Sonic, so we decided to try our luck. 

And we were IN luck!  They had the wildberry stuff!!  We happily slurped our way through to Norma's house.  She and Mom had a nice visit.  Oh, before I forget, ....  Trenton, TN.  I'm casually motoring along when out of the corner of my eye I saw a speed limit sign, and for the life of me, I'm thinking it said the speed limit was 31!?  Mom and I chuckled and then we found another.  So I had to pull over and take a pic and post it on FB.

We arrived at our hotel in Hamilton, Marion County, Alabama about 7-ish.  Our choices for hotels on Hotel.com (who doesn't love Captain Obvious!?) were not great, but we chose the lesser of the evils... and it was ok.  There was a huge spider on the ceiling in our room, but the manager willingly came and killed it for us.  Although I did not leave my empty shoes on the floor while in the room, it was ok.  The complimentary breakfast was cereal or make your own waffles.  But since I like waffles and hadn't had one in quite a while it worked for me.

Next episode:  Yet Another Vacation Spent Roaming Around Cemeteries!