Day 6 - Evansville, IL to North Canton, OH

This morning while we were in the lobby eating breakfast, Mimi left Sweet Pea and me so she could finish packing up.  Shortly after Mimi headed upstairs, the fire alarm went off.  None of the staff seemed to know what was going on, so I took Sweet Pea by the hand and went outside to the parking lot.

Mimi had just stepped off the elevator when the fire alarm went off. She heard the alarm and then watched as the huge fire doors swung shut in front of her, sealing off the hallway to our room where her little poodle Cheri was locked in her crate. She was sure I had gotten Sweet Pea outside immediately so that worry was taken care of, but she was very upset about poor Cherie.  Although Mimi tried, rather desperately, to get the fire doors open, they were sealed tight.  The elevator was also not working, so she ran down the stairs and headed to the front desk where she found the 'all clear' had been given and there was no long any danger.  Some workers had accidentally set off the alarm.  Mimi commented that even a false alarm can shave years off your age with worry.




Today we were headed to our Aunt Joan's house in North Canton, OH.  It took us a long time to get out of the hotel, but we eventually made it back on the road.  In Indiana, we stopped for lunch at Wendy's because we were lured in by the promise of free coffee.  The coffee was okay, but none of us will not be eating another Wendy's hamburger again for quite some time.




We were at the Indiana/Kentucky border and just by coincidence, we stopped at the exact same exit where we stopped last year.  It is hard to see, but below is a picture of the infamous "Lee's Chicken", where a woman stuck her head out her van (which, by the way, was filled with 5 large dogs) and started barking at Mimi as she drove out of the parking lot... and next door is the gas station where a bunch boys in a pick-up truck started howling.




On our way out of Indiana, we drove on the bottom deck of a double decker bridge. We had never seen one of these and Sweet Pea got to sing the "Here We Go Under the Bridge"song, which only has one lyric (see above) for the longest time ever.


Good-Bye Indiana!




Whoops! Hello Indiana. We took the wrong highway and soon ended up back in the state we had just left...





Okay, now this time for real.  Good Bye Indiana! Hello Kentucky!





I was thrilled to find a Starbucks and ordered a large chai, which was probably responsible for about 5 bathrooms stops over the course of the next 2 hours.





Cheri slept behind my seat.





Amelia couldn't stay awake either.





It was almost rush hour just as we got to Columbus, OH and so we decided to stop for some dinner to avoid some of the traffic.  We found a Chipotle and ate outside on the patio.  I liked my meal well enough, but Mimi's "steak" tacos were so unexpectedly spicy that she couldn't eat them.  And as soon as she complained that hers was too spicy, Sweet Pea said her meal was too spicy also.  It wasn't really a successful dinner stop.




After dinner, we headed back out and finally arrived in Canton after 9pm.  It was so good to see Aunt Joan!  We were really tired and wanted to go straight to bed.  I started moving furniture to pull out the hide-a-bed when I ran an ottoman over my big toenail and pulled it away from my toe.  Ouch!!!


It was a long day of driving and we were thrilled to finally be stopped somewhere for a few days!
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Day 5 - Carmi

We headed to Carmi, which is a little over an hour from Evansville.  About halfway into the trip, Mimi said that she needed a bathroom break.  There is not much in the way of rest stops in Southern Illinois, so we had to take what we could get.  We found a crusty old gas station with a bathroom outside.  When Mimi returned to the car she informed us that, "It wasn't too bad considering that I had to wipe with a paper towel."

On a previous trip we had found an intriguing and quite beautiful little town named New Harmony so we decided to go through on our way to Carmi so we could see it again.  As we drove in we noticed the beautiful trees and Shannon mentioned a sign she had seen that said something about a detour and the New Harmony Bridge.  We had a very pleasant time looking again at this quaint town and discussing its strange history.  It was getting later, so we headed for the bridge that takes us out of town and on the road to Carmi.  Oh, how we wished we had paid more attention to the sign as we were entering New Harmony because the New Harmony Bridge was completely closed. We had to back track through the town and drive north to get on a highway to cross the Wabash river and then back down south again to get to Carmi.


We finally arrived in Carmi and were running out of time to do genealogy research because almost everything in Carmi closes before 4:30pm.  I wanted to go to the Mary Smith Fay Genealogical Library, but we had to feed Amelia so Mimi dropped me off at the library and headed to the only place in Carmi we thought we could trust: McDonalds.  Amelia is always happy when we dine at McDonalds... Shannon and Jill, not so much.

Amelia and Mimi ate at McDonalds and then brought a hamburger back to me.  Mimi reported an odd "small town" occurance that happened to them at the McDonalds.  When Amelia amd Mimi walked into the McDonalds they had to pass a table of older gentlemen who were all seated together. Mimi immediately thought they must be the afternoon 'regulars'.  When they again walked by them to leave one of them made a rat-a-tat-tat sound with his hand on the table top, looked at them with an air of authority and declared quite loudly, "Passin' Through!"

No food or drink was allowed in the library so I had to eat my hamburger on the steps.



The ladies at the library were super helpful and helped me unearth this old obituary for Ethel Nevel who was my Grandfather Wrye Nevel's sister.



We found several good things there, but the library only has one microfiche machine and another woman came in and sat down and started just reading old newspapers on it.  We had several other specific things to look up, but couldn't.  One of the nice woman who worked at the genealogy library called the regular library for us and then came over to tell us that the regular library had some of the records we wanted and an available microfiche machine so we packed up and headed down the street.

It was about 3:45pm and I didn't think we were going to make it to the County Courthouse to get death certificates so I sent Mimi off alone to get them, while I stayed at the library.

When Mimi returned she had found several death certificates, including this one for Ethel Nevel (as in the obit above).  Oddly, the death certificate listed her last name Reed, which was her mother's second husband's name (who was NOT Ethel's father).  So interesting...




After Carmi shut down, we headed back to Evansville.  We were starving, as usual, and stopped at the Thai Papaya restaurant.   We were surprised by how great the food was.  We had a ground pork salad called Larb and my favorite soup, Thom Kah Gai.  It was some of the best Thai food I've ever had.  Who would have guessed that you could find good ethnic food in Evansville?




Next door to the Thai restaurant was a nail salon.  Mimi had badly chipped a couple of her nails earlier so she went over after dinner to get them re-polished.




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Day 4 - St Louis to Evansville, IL

We were planning on meeting our second cousin, Mary Ann, and going to Carmi today for some genealogy research, but about an hour out of town, we hit a huge rain storm.  It also started to get foggy (pea soup foggy) so Mimi decided that it was just too dangerous to drive.  She pulled off at the next exit and we found ourselves in the parking lot of K-Mart.

We ran through the rain to get inside and then did a little shopping.  We browsed for Father's Day cards.




After browsing through a meager 3 rows of Father's Day cards, we wished we had washed up on the shores of a Hallmark Card shop instead.




Amelia found some balloons.




We picked up some super glue, chocolate and a few more things.  The major portion of the storm front had passed us by this point, but when I looked at the radar on my phone, the storm was still between us and Carmi.  We were rather uncertain if we would catch up to the storm if we headed out so we decided to have lunch before moving on. Once again we followed our motto, "When in doubt, Eat."

It was lucky Mimi pulled off at the exit she did, because we discovered a Joe's Crab Shack right by us.  How could we pass up crab legs?



Oh my, the crab was so good. Hooray for storm stops.






After lunch, we headed for Mary Ann's house again. It rained all the way there, but the bad part of the storm had either dissipated or moved on.  Mary Ann and her husband Ron lived in an adorable little house and welcomed us warmly even though we were about 5 hours late.

We were thrilled when Mary Ann showed us another fantastic old picture that she had found from her grandmother.  This one was from about 1903 and was a class photo from Fields School in old Shawneetown.  It contained 3 of our relatives.  Aunt Sallie (Mary Ann's grandmother) is on the top row, second from the right.  Uncle Harry and Aunt Ethel are both on the second row from the top.  Uncle Harry is first from the left and Aunt Ethel is standing next to him - second on the left.

We were so delayed by the storm, that we decided we couldn't make it to Carmi today.  Instead, we were going to head through old Shawneetown and then spend the night in Evansville.  On our way, we remembered that our cousin Mary Ann had told us that our other cousin (also named Mary Ann) still lived nearby in McLeansboro.  We called her to see if she wanted to visit with us and after a little bit of phone tag, ended up at her house chatting with her and her little brother John David.  Mary Ann #2 wanted us to come back on our way back home and generously invited us to stay with her for a couple of nights.  She wanted us to meet her family and also look through a box of her mother's old pictures.  We are really looking forward to seeing her again next week.


After all the visiting we were much later getting to Evansville than we expected.  It was about 9pm and we were starving so we decided to pick up a little snack from Outback.






Sweet Pea conked out almost immediately.   She is turning into a super traveler.




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Day 3 - St. Louis City Museum

Today we went to the amazing City Museum in St. Louis.  It is hard to describe and is mostly made from salvaged architectural pieces and "junk" from around St. Louis.  Everything is designed to be touched, climbed over and crawled through.




Our first stop was an area known as "the caves" which was full of concrete tunnels.  I really regret not putting Sweet Pea in long pants though, because the ground was really rough on her tender knees.






We walked into the mouth of a giant whale.

There were ladders and stairs and hanging crawl spaces _everywhere_.  I knew that the City Museum was going to be fun, but it was even better than I expected.  It was mind blowing.





We found a slide that warned "The heavier you are, the faster you will go!" But Mimi was not to be deterred.  She went very fast.  lol.  And hurt her back a little bit.

We spent a bit of time in the "toddler" room, where Sweet Pea was able to play in a huge cage full of balls and Mimi was able to lay on a rubber ABC mat to do her back exercises, which luckily seemed to do the trick so we could get back to exploring.

We passed by an "Old Curiosity Shop" looking room where we met the "Snowflake Lady".  She showed us how to cut folded paper to make snowflakes that contained animals and objects hidden in their designs.  Sweet Pea made a dragonfly snowflake.  I cut out a "very hard" swallowtail butterfly snowflake and Mimi made the most beautiful of them all, which was a "very hard" fairy snowflake.  

We chose the "very hard" designs because she told us that she would laminate them for free if we were able to complete them.  Of course, we were up for the challenge and got our snowflakes laminated.  We had so much fun with her, that the Snowflake Lady invited us to come back after lunch to make Amish rag dolls with her.

We had some very tasty sandwiches for lunch at the Samwiches in the City restaurant.  Sweet Pea was crazy about her pretzel bread grilled cheese, which she unfortunately dropped on the floor before she finished.  There was a lot of crying.

After lunch, we returned for our lesson in making the Amish rag dolls.  You could choose to make a regular doll, a princess, a fairy, a ninja or a pirate.  We all chose to make fairies.  The lesson went very fast and was extremely stressful.  The Snowflake Lady turned out to be quite a taskmaster, but we were thrilled with the results.





Mimi's fairy "Marigold" is the redhead on the left.  Sweet Pea made the blond in the middle and named her "Clover".  My doll, "Lily", is the one with the red face and white hair on the right.   We have become surprisingly attached to them.  Aren't they beautiful?




Sweet Pea finished up the day at the City Museum by going down a 2 story slide, 3 times in a row.  We reluctantly left a truly magical place, with promises to return.








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Day 2 - St. Louis - Cafe Provencal & The Magic House

Today for lunch we went to one of our favorite restaurants in St. Louis, Cafe Provencal.







We started with a wonderful steaming hot plate of escargot in garlicky butter sauce.




I ordered Beef Daube, which had such an amazing rich red wine flavor.



Mimi got fresh trout, which was perfectly cooked.  The fennel flavoring made it exquisite.  Mimi commented on what a very large piece of fish it was, but she somehow managed to eat every bit of it.




We loved this huge old poster for escargot.



After lunch we headed to a children's museum called The Magic House.

At the entrance, there is a lovely sculpture of children playing Ring-Around-The-Rosie with an opening space just the right size for a real child.  Mimi spent some time getting Sweet Pea adjusted so she could play too.

There were several other sculptures of animals.  It does not look like it in the photo, but this snake was extremely realistic and a bit terrifying.  Sweet Pea was brave enough to try to feed it.




Sweet Pea was able to ride in a train, blow the whistle and even shovel pretend coal into the hopper.




There were tons of fantatic activities for kids.  Below Sweet Pea was sticking transparent pegs into a light board to make them glow.




Sweet Pea is looking in a little cut away "mouse hole" in the wall that had little pretend mice in it.



There was an entire "pretend" town filled with a life size library, vet's office, bank, utility company, pizza shop, auto repair store.  It was like a child's wonderland.

Sweet Pea served us ice cream from an ice cream cart.




There was a pond with real water and magnetic fishing poles so the kids could "catch" magnetic fish.



Sweet Pea cooked and served us pizza at the pizza parlor.



There was a hospital nursery filled with "newborn" dolls and lots of ways to care for them.  Below Sweet Pea is taking care of one of the babies.



Later, we saw a Lewis and Clark exhibit.  Just as we were about to enter one section of it, a museum guide yelled after us, "There are tunnels and slides."  We swung over pits, crawled through tunnels, went over rope bridges and went down slides.  It was quite an adventure.



On our way out, we stopped to take this picture of the entrance.

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Location:Day 2: St. Louis - Part 1