Road Trip! Music, Food, History, America.

So here is the rundown on our trip across this great country...

Thursday - We drove from West Bloomfield, MI to Horse Cave, KY and it rained buckets for the last 3 hours of the drive from Cincinnati to the hotel. Miserable. We could see the lightning off in the distance from the Skyline Chili north of Dayton. Skyline Chili http://www.skylinechili.com/ still rocks, and this began what ended up being as much of a food tour as a history tour... Pink Floyd Meddle is a great night time disc and this was a great listen. Listening to Meddle during a night time drive takes me back to the best Meddle experience I've had driving from Jerusalem to Masada in the middle of the night to get there for the climb to the top to watch the sunrise back in '94 - but I digress... We actually kicked off the trip with the 2 new Prince discs LotusFlow3r and MPLSound and these both sound great at first run through. Major potential here - 3 songs in I thought that if the first album ended right here it would already be twice as strong as Planet Earth.

Friday - We ate the complimentary breakfast at the Hampton Inn and hit the road. Thought we'd stop at a cave but it was over an hour wait and we needed to stay on course to get to Pensacola - only time for one stop, so we made it at the Hermitage just outside of Nashville. The Hermitage is Andrew Jackson's home and it is pretty impressive. http://www.thehermitage.com/ Good museum, nice grounds and the house is in great shape. They say it's one of the most well preserved presidential homes with about 90% of the furnishings, wallpaper etc. being original. Strange that I came away learning more about the actual house and history of the estate than I did about President Jackson himself. That might be my next book although I'm eyeing bios of Lincoln, Polk, and Teddy Roosevelt as well. Afterwards we got back on the road and got some Gov't Mule and Allman Brothers going for the deeper push into the South. We stopped in Bessemer, AL for BBQ at Bob Sykes. www.bobsykes.com This place is ridiculous - worth the detour if you are ever in the Birmingham, AL area. We found it on www.roadfood.com which is an awesome website. Got back on the road stuffed and ready to puke, pass out, or both. Night time driving - Porcupine Tree and The Church... rolled into Pensacola around 10:30.

Saturday - spent time with family all day and ate dinner at the Oar House - good food and live music. http://www.myspace.com/theoarhouse

Sunday - got on the road around 1 and headed to Fort Blakeley, AL. http://new.siteone.com/sites/blakeleypark.com/ Site of the last battle of the Civil War - happened later in the day after the surrender at Appomattox took place. Parts of this battlefield are really well preserved and they were having a reenactment there. Very impressive - live artillery, a full battalion assault, Union and Confederate cavalry dualing with swords on horseback. Awesome to see - like watching the Civil War happening right before your eyes. Of course got into some friendly banter with some crazy Alabama and Auburn fans. The Alabama guy was driving the bus at the park and was hardcore boy... I told him I hoped he wasn't still upset about the 2 times out of 3 that we beat them. He had respect for Michigan and didn't try to talk any SEC smack. From there we headed West and Northwest through Mobile and up to Hattiesburg, MS. Nice drive across Mobile Bay and through Mississippi. We took a little drive through the Southern Miss campus - very charming campus and a cool football stadium with Brett Farve's number retired. We ate at the Crescent City Grill http://www.nsrg.com/crescent.asp and the food was fantastic - I had the fried catfish over dirty rice smothered in crawfish etouffee and we split the New Orleans bread pudding and buttered pecan pie with a little Haagen Daaz vanilla ice cream on top. We pulled into Corinth at another Hampton Inn that night. The hotel stands on what was part of the Corinth Battlefield.

Monday - Spent the morning touring the Corinth Battlefield - more to see than I anticipated and didn't get to see it all. Horrible weather - very cold and drizzly. Drove through back country roads from there to Shiloh National Battlefield and spent a few hours there. http://www.nps.gov/shil/ Had my battlefield disc going (INXS Listen Like Thieves). Awesome battlefield. We met a man at the visitor's center whose grandfather fought in the battle. His grandfather was 18 in 1862, had this guy's dad in 1908 when he was 64, and this guy was born in 1953 when his dad was 45. It works out - you don't expect people walking around being able to say their grandpa fought at Shiloh! I suppose there could be a 90 year old walking around somewhere whose grandpa fought in the Revolution? They would have to have been born in 1919 say, to a 74 year old born in 1845 to a 73 year old born in 1772 who fought at the age of 16 in 1788... Anyway, Shiloh is perfectly preserved and totally unencumbered by commercialization of any sort. The battlefield is well marked to get a complete understanding of the fight that took place there on those two fateful days - 147 years to the day before we were standing there when it started on April 6th. The only drawback was the weather - it was freaking hailing on us! We left Shiloh and headed Northwest through beautful country roads to the Natchez Trace National Parkway http://www.nps.gov/natr/ and traveled along it for about 20 miles or so. What a scenic drive (a little REM, more Allmans and Gov't Mule), and along the way stopped at the Meriwether Lewis gravesite and monument. That evening making our way back up to Horse Cave, KY we stopped at another roadfood.com joint outside of Nashville called Sylvan Park Restaurant. Another gem - catfish, fried crab cakes, candied apples, the best mac and cheese ever, fried corn, incredible cornbread, cocunut cream pie (they threw in a couple extra slices for the road on the house) and chess pie. We had never heard of chess pie - amazing! They actually gave us their recipe so we'll be eating it again soon. http://www.roadfood.com/Reviews/Overview.aspx?RefID=472

Tuesday - Took a trip over to Abe Lincoln's birthplace and boyhood home in Hodgenville, KY. http://www.nps.gov/abli/ Great visitor's center and a really impressive monument to Abe Lincoln with 56 steps for each year of his life. The actual water spring that they used for their water supply was still there and still running. From there we made one last stop in Cincinnati at William Howard Taft's boyhood home. http://www.nps.gov/wiho/ It is the only national site dedicated to Taft and it is worth the stop. I only wish we had a little more time to spend there to look through the exhibits on the upper level of the house. Roadfood directed us to the Camp Washington Chili joint in Cincinnati for the last meal of the trip. Great diner atmosphere and great 5 way chili, but while the locals might disagree with me on this one, it wasn't necessarily better than Skyline Chili.

I highly recommend taking a trip like this. You will find it incredibly relaxing, educational, and rewarding. Make the drive itself the destination and see things you normally wouldn't. The kids had a blast - it was a total adventure for them and they were exposed to so much history and culture. The people we met along the way were all friendly and helpful and we came away with a new appreciation for regions we had never experienced.