The Road Home

Due to a comment yesterday about Dave's lack of excitement about my quilting experience, I decided I'd add a few words today. I was so excited about going to the National Quilt Museum that I could hardly wait to get through my lunch. It was bitterly cold but a short walk and there were no quilt guilds visiting, so there were very few people there. There were the 2014 and 2013 Award winners from the International Quilt Show, and many, many other stunning quilts. I was disappointed that I wasn't allowed to take pictures, so bought the book that outlines the 600 or so quilts in the collection. They are rotated every three or four months. There are two side galleries with visiting collections as well. There were many intricate works of thread painting, that is all done by machine, but seems almost beyond my understanding. Two really cool quilts based on The Hobbit that took years to make. There was a little boy about four and his Mom and sister who were trying to find all the different hidden parts of one of them. She had a hard time getting him to move on. Later I heard the sister ask how many men quilters there were. On display at the time there were five.

After spending an hour in the museum I visited the Gift Store and walked out with some very nice souvenirs. Then the real shopping began. I loved the store called Quilt in a Day. The lady there designs her own fabric. It was reasonably priced, but the real deals were at Hancock's Fabrics where I managed to find several end of bolt pieces on sale.

Today was a disappointment though. As Dave will tell you, we decided to pass by Maker's Mark on our way home, the last of the Bourbon Trail places we didn't get to see last week. I thought we should look for one more quilt store so I looked up Quilt on the GPS. It took us to a suburb of Lexington, someone's home, and there were two police cars in front, one of which was the Sherrif's, so we decided to pass on by! I'll make up for it when I get home and visit Ruti's the next time.

I'm sure you'll agree that it's a good thing that Dave writes this blog. If it was me, you'd never get to the end of it! Thanks for reading so far.

And... I'm back. Wow, Marilyn is right. This would be a much longer blog if she did all the writing! Also, I should have asked her to write something yesterday about the quilts as I knew she was very excited to go. I did think it was interesting to see the police cars outside the quilter's place. By the way, it was called Mad Dog Quilts! I'm thinking it was a cover operation for some bikers or something. 

Quick, I need a picture. Too many words already!!!

We did go back to Maker's Mark distillery and it involved a great ride over the narrow, winding roads again. They have a 55 mph limit but you can only do that on the straight parts! They let you buy a bottle of bourbon, put on protective clothing and dip it into the hot wax. We were already over our limit of alcohol to bring home, so I got some etched shot glasses instead and had them dipped. They don't let you dip glasses because they're too small and you could burn yourself. Me? Burn myself? These are my glasses being dipped. 

After the distillery and the quilt search, it was still another hundred or so miles to Cincinnati. There wasn't a lot to see so we mainly chatted and listened to music until we arrived. We drove right downtown easily which was a surprise based on my Toronto life. Got parking for $5 which I thought was a joke, but it wasn't. Eight hours in the heart of downtown for $5!! As we walked out of the parking garage, we entered what is called Fountain Square and found that a beer festival was just setting up! 

There were stands set up all around the square but no beer until 6:00.

As we had some time to kill, we walked down towards the waterfront to find a brew pub that we'd been told about. They have some beautiful parkland that runs along the Ohio River. The baseball and football stadiums are also down there. We've decided that we need to go back to properly explore Cincinnati another time.

This shot shows a bit of the park, with a balloon clown, the brew pub and part of the baseball stadium.

There are a number of bridges that cross the river to Kentucky as well. I thought this one looked a bit like the Brooklyn Bridge.

The brew pub is an offshoot of a German brewery that dates back to the 1800s. They had some great beer and, as you can see, delicious food. I had the beer brat and Marilyn had a chopped salad with rotisserie chicken, blue cheese, tomatoes and avocado. We think that we'll add bacon when we do it at home. 

On our way back we walked by the Great American Stadium (named after the sponsoring Insurance Company) and thought it was a good looking park. I like how you can see right into the field from the outside. 

When we got back to Fountain Square, anticipating a couple of beer samples, we were reminded of why we don't go to beer and food fests in Toronto. There was a line about half a block long just to buy the tickets to get the samples. No thanks! We looked around a bit more and headed off to our hotel. We'll be home tomorrow and I think it will, as usual, be nice to sleep in our own bed again!

This entry wouldn't upload at the hotel last night so I'll just finish things off now. We arrived home after about 10 hours of driving, 2 more than the gps indicated. I guess it doesn't take into account construction slowdowns and coffee/bathroom breaks! 

We really enjoyed this trip because we saw lots of new sights, ate great food, had a few drinks and met some very friendly people. Tennessee and Kentucky have some beautiful scenery and great roads, as well as bourbon and moonshine! I think Cincinnati will definitely be on our list for a return visit and we are really happy with the Marriott Residence Inn chain and will use them again. If you go to Cleveland or Memphis, we can recommend a great hotel! 

Here's the haul from this trip. I can't decide if I'm more excited about the bourbon & moonshine (the legal kind) or all of my new Lodge cast iron cookware. Marilyn loves all of her quilting materials the most I think! 

Quilt Day!

Today, we drove from Memphis to Paducah, Kentucky. We were told it would be like Saskatchewan with more trees. And, it was. We took a scenic highway through a lot of Tennessee and saw quite a few small towns, speed traps and about 157 churches. The most exciting thing was this diner being moved. I don't know where it was going but it looks interesting and I bet it will be excellent when it gets cleaned up a bit. 

It was grey and rainy when we got to Paducah. We'd also gone from 34 degrees yesterday afternoon to 18 during the drive. My shorts and golf shirt weren't working out very well. At least it felt like home! I don't have any photos from my part of the afternoon because I went on a wine search and found a giant liquor store with a drive through. I was quite impressed with that but didn't want to look like a complete tourista by taking pictures. Then I got an oil change. Not overly exciting.

Marilyn, on the other hand, was quite excited by her trip to the National Quilt Museum. From what I understand, it has a lot of quilts hanging on the walls. They are really intricate quilts and many have won awards. Unfortunately, they didn't allow pictures in the museum so we only have outside shots.

While I was getting the oil change, Marilyn was in a massive quilting material store. 

Marilyn was also in a couple of other stores and this was the result of her shopping.

I picked Marilyn up after the oil change and we walked around downtown Paducah. I'm not sure if it was because it was kind of cool and rainy or because summer was over, but there were very few people to be found. Once again, it reminded me of a scene from The Walking Dead. Many of the stores were closed by 5:00 and most restaurants were sparsely populated at best. 

 

We ended up down by the Ohio River and there was a whole wall of murals along the shore depicting the history of Paducah. 

There was also a cool locomotive that had a historical connection to the town. I find it fascinating to look closely at the heavy duty construction of old machines. 

We are off to Cincinnati tomorrow on what should be the second last day of this road trip. Our hotel is on the outskirts of the city but we plan on exploring some of the downtown and waterfront during the day. 

Rainy Day In Memphis

We woke up to thunder and lightning and rain hitting the windows. When we got down to breakfast, the news was showing extensive flooding in the area. That made us really glad that we booked the extra day here and didn't have to drive in the mess. From what we saw of the local traffic, we wouldn't have gotten far anyway. 

Our first activity today was to visit the National Civil Rights Museum. It was a fair walk to get there so we chose to take the bus after a couple of blocks. They have a $1 per ride bus that runs up and down the main street and passes the museum.

The Civil Rights Museum is a must see if you are ever in this part of the world. We both left pretty much shaking our heads in disbelief after seeing, reading and listening to the stories and facts about slavery, racism and the struggle for rights. No matter how much you think you know, you don't really know much. You start out at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968. It's quite chilling to stand where the crowd was, where the sniper was and where MLK was when it all happened. 

This is the approximate view from where the shot was fired. The building is across from the museum and is preserved along with a great deal of evidence from the case. 

The museum, which is in a new building attached to the hotel, starts off with a movie and extensive displays about slavery and how it proliferated because of its importance to the economy of the country. Again, you think you know a fair bit from school and reading and other media, but you don't. Some of the facts are incredible.

And then you move into the Civil War years and the Emancipation Proclamation. Many people think that was the end of slavery, but it wasn't. The displays continue on through the decades where racism persisted and blacks continued to be mistreated and attacked on many different fronts. There is a lot of archival tv footage showing what happened during the civil rights protests during the late 50s and 60s. I was aware of a lot of the major events but there was so much that went on that was behind the scenes that was shocking.

There are quite a few displays showing recreations of famous or infamous civil rights flashpoints. This is Rosa Parks sitting on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

I think you get the idea that this was a very powerful visit for both of us. We would easily go back and do it again.

When we left with just enough time to make our river cruise, the pouring rain had come back. Some of the ceilings in the museum were actually leaking and the streets looked like this:

After a quick lunch, we made it to our paddlewheeler for a cruise on the Mississippi River. We had a great guide who told us a lot of history of the river and Memphis. It wasn't raining but the sky was grey and threatening, not making for great photos. Mostly, we listened to the stories as the  scenery passed by.

This is interesting because it shows some of the levees that protect the city from floods.

These are the bridges that connect Tennessee to Arkansas. We might be taking one of them tomorrow as cutting through Arkansas seems to be the quickest route back to Kentucky. 

We passed a number of large barges carrying coal, grain and unknown things. This one was larger than most because it was going downstream.

You'd think we'd be done by now but no! We had the shuttle guy drop us at the Memphis Rock 'N Soul Museum. It was a self guided place where you learned about the history of rock and roll, soul and the blues from this part of the states. They touched on the segregation and race issues as they related to the music but it wasn't as powerful as the Civil Rights presentations. There was more on how music served to bring the races together in many ways. 

A short while later we were walking on Beale Street and decided to have a beer and listen to some blues at BB King's place. There was a great band playing and we stayed for a set before heading off to find some non bar food.

Last, but not least on this long day, we went back to the Kooky Canuk restaurant because we had told the owner yesterday that we'd be back for lunch. Due to spending extra time at the Civil Rights Museum, we didn't do that so we felt we should go for dinner. He was very glad to see us and gave us some extra sides to go with our blackend and fried catfish. It was all really good but way too much. We have a doggy bag for the ride tomorrow. You have to love the "Canadian" theme in the place. I know we all have lots of stuffed animals in our homes! As with everyone we've met here, the people were very friendly and we had a great time along with the excellent meal!

 

We enjoyed watching the sun go down over the Mississippi from our roof top patio. I would highly recommend this hotel if you're in Memphis!

We're off to Padukah, Kentucky tomorrow. I'm told that this is the Quilt Capital of the World. And there are at least four quilt stores! I'll be dropping Marilyn off and going on a photo expedition or something. I need to look up what else is in or around Padukah!

Best BBQ & Arriving In Memphis

Our goal today was to leave Nashville early and get to Memphis early to start looking around. We did leave early but realized about an hour into the drive that we would be sort of passing by a small town called Brownsville TN. This is the home of a bbq shack called Helen's that was featured on BBQ Crawl. I think places like Helen's are the reason why we travel. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere and we happened to be passing by after travelling over 2000 km from home. It was an amazing place and we got to meet Helen, one of the few female pit masters, and have a chat with her.

This is Helen's place. It's about a mile from Brownsville's centre but it's worth the drive whether you're coming from Mississauga or Memphis. Helen makes pulled pork and smoked bologna. I'm told the bologna is great but we didn't try it this time. 

Here's Helen's. If you  are ever near Memphis or even just in Tennessee, you really need to take the time to drive out and visit. 

The back of the building is the smoker. There are fires where oak and hickory are turned into coals that slowly cook the meat to perfection. I don't think I could work in that much smoke and heat but Helen and her crew do it every day!

This is a view into the kitchen. You can see that smoke is everywhere. Our car had a pleasant smoke aroma all the way to Memphis!

And here is the final product. Helen does the best pulled pork we've had in our travels. It was very moist and flavourful. There are mild and hot sauces that you can use, but you don't need to add anything to Helen's pork. 

Here I am with Helen. For me, it was like meeting a rock star! 

 

While we were in the area, we noticed that the town of Nutbush was only about 8 miles away. That happens to be the home town of Tina Turner and the highway to the town is actually named after her. She has a song called Nutbush City Limits. Of course we decided to drive over and see what kind of sign or monument was there. Well, there wasn't much there. The town was a few run down buildings and the commemorative sign was pretty sad. I guess we know why Tina left!

Memphis was a short hour drive from Helen's so we arrived in the early afternoon and checked in. Our reservation was for one night but when we saw the hotel and the room, we quickly decided to go for two nights. This will allow us to spend more time exploring and we've already booked a river boat tour for tomorrow. The room is almost like an apartment with a kitchenette and a type of loft bedroom. There's also a sitting area and a small dining table. As Marilyn said, We could live here!

Our first walk was down to the banks of the Mississippi where there is a park that runs to Beale St.

 

Beale Street itself was not that big, but we've come to expect that. It was also not too busy but everyone was saying that it is much busier at night. We still managed to visit BB King's Blues Club and a few of the stores that were open. One place has some very interesting art work and toilet seats!

After wandering around a bit, we found an odd restaurant called Kookie Canuck. It's a Canadian themed restaurant owned by a guy from Montreal and Toronto. It has the basic beers and poutine along with other themed foods. It's famous for its giant burgers that run 4 or 6 pounds. If you eat them, you don't pay. Everything is large, including the beers. Might go back for lunch as the owner came out and talked to us for a while and gave us some advice about the city.

Before heading back to our hotel to get ready for dinner, we ended up at the famous Peabody Hotel to watch some ducks. Yes, ducks. It's a long story, but there are some ducks in a fountain in the hotel and they are paraded in every morning at 11:00 and back out at 5:00. There is a Duck Master and the ducks have an apartment on the roof of the hotel. Somewhat bizarre but people flock to see them. I hesitate to admit this, but we waited 45 minutes for the procession to start! The ducks even have a red carpet that leads them to the elevator!

Dinner tonight was at a Memphis institution called Charles Vergos' Rendezvous. It's a bbq place that has been on numerous tv shows. I believe the downstairs part we were in holds over 250 people. They serve excellent brisket and dry seasoned ribs that are cooked over charcoal, which is different than the other bbq places. 

Marilyn says that we didn't really walk far enough to balance all the food we ate today. We did just under 8 km but it was very hot out and we did spend quite a bit of time driving!