90 Sunny, hazy Airquality alert in Nashville. Suggested: Limit trips.
The deep south is close. Tennessee was one of the upper slave holding states at the beginning of the civil war and did not secede with the lower south states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and tomorrow’s destination, Alabama.
Murfeesboro, Tennessee has the Stones River Civil War Battlefield.
Today’s journey was and is hot. As the road pushed further into southern Illinois, there were signs for college majors in coal mining. Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University was in the vicinity. These are also unglaciated limestone hills sitting atop layers of plant life from the Carboniferous, now black and concentrated into veins of coal. Heat and coal and the underground, the cthonic realms go together.
The Ohio river, the mighty Ohio, flexed its muscles today, swollen muddy and fast. It was over its banks and looked like it would get higher. This is a big river and where it feeds into the Mississippi multiplies the river we call the Father of Waters.
Kentucky, which never seceded and therefore allowed Union access to the south side of the Ohio, continues, in the main, the rolling limestone hills in southern Illinois.
Paducah, home of the National Quilter’s Museum and the only place in the US creating nuclear fuel for electricity generation from out of date Russian weapons (literally swords into plowshare), is not far from the bridge over the Ohio.
At Russert’s, a woman named Keeum (Kim) took mah ordah. Cahtfeesh. She was real nice. She gave me a to go order of iced tea. Good food. Boy, the folks must like it down here, it’s roly polyville.
Nashville had a freeway down, but there was a quick way around the bottle neck and I found it. Cities do not draw me in as they once did. I find myself more interested in the quiet, secluded setting and Murfeesboro, though a city, does not intrude too much out here near the Stones River Battlefield. I’ll go there in the morning, then scoot on down to Prattville and the Plantation Bed and Breakfast.
I finished a 24 lecture course on the American Revolution in the 11 plus hours I drove yesterday. A nice setup for the 48 lecture course I began today on the Civil War. Fits right in with the trip.
