Day 29: Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas & Tennessee

So today was day two of the ‘bonus days’. And much like years ago when you took a few dodgy photos of a dog or the back of the house to spend out the film in your disposable camera before getting it developed, I’m filling these days with the same kind of stuff – random things. I spent the night in Mattoon, Illinois – the state where I began this whole journey. Crossing back into the Central Standard Time Zone again I enjoyed the lay in again this morning, afforded to me by a lack of a target other than 0700hrs on Monday morning at O’Hare. So as I looked out on a harvested corn field I decided to get back on the road and head back to the highway and get on into St. Louis in Missouri. Before that though, as I turned out of the gas station after feeding the ‘Avenger’ his daily meal of 87 octane jungle juice, I spied an Aldi sign. I’d seen one of these on day one of the journey from Chicago to Nebraska but at that hour it was closed, so here was my chance to assess if it was just like the Aldi Nord stores in Ireland. Low and behold, it is a carbon copy. Now, most of the food stuffs are US-sourced, but I was surprised to see cut-price olive oil imported from Italy and a decent spread of fruit and vegetables, something you don’t see in most drug-stores, which is predominately where people go when they need convenience shopping.

Outside the Aldi, I searched for a Starbucks and decided to follow the highway to the interstate and get some outside Effingham. With both the ‘Avenger’ and myself now sufficiently drugged up, I began the rather long trek to St. Louis. A little over 2 hours later and I was sitting on a bridge in traffic over the Mississippi river. My timing was almost perfect however, (almost like I had planned it) and I was on track to meet with one of St. Louis’s most famous barbecue houses, Bogart’s. There are several BBQ styles in the US, predominately Texas, Memphis, St. Louis and Carolina. I’ve sampled the Texas and some delicious Mississippi barbecue which has its own unique style, and much to my disappointment I was unable to sample the Carolina BBQ because the place I’d chosen was too popular. But today I’d done my homework, and headed straight into the location. After a few minutes of queueing, and some sage advice from the owner’s wife suggesting I try the ribs without the sauce first, I couldn’t put off the wait any more, and in the car I tucked into the first of this slab – and it was divine. Simply stunning. Taking the lead from the Yelp users again, I also took on the baked beans side with burnt ends, and they too were delicious. After a few minutes and a lot of holding back, I wrapped up the remaining slab and saved it away for later, after all, this was a cost-cutting exercise! Googling where best to see the arch so famous in the St. Louis skyline, I crossed the Mississippi once more to the Malcolm W. Martin park, sandwiched between the two bridges and a grain storage silo.

After taking the requisite photos and enjoying a few moments looking directly at St. Louis across North America’s most famous river, I decided to hit the road again – further south this time, toward Memphis. Again you may be seeing a pattern here, where food is the primary driving force behind a lot of these stops, but it also makes sense in this loop when you look at the map. Beyond that, I’ve little to report – the journey was, as is the majority of journeys on interstates have been, pretty mundane. I had a surprise at one point when I saw the sign welcoming me into Arkansas, which I hadn’t expected. This of course is the state that gave us Bill Clinton. I also saw quite a lot of cotton fields however, evoking powerful images of the slave trade that drove the civil war. I never knew Missouri and Arkansas were cotton-growing states though, and after a while I began to wonder how it was harvested. The giant plastic bales I’d mistaken for giant yellow tic-tacs turned out to be the bales of collected cotton, so there’s obviously some mechanisation now, so hopefully very little of the ‘cotton-picking’ of old. Tomorrow I might pass by Graceland, although I’ve no interest in visiting it. I’m reminded of the Mark Cohn song however, and with that I’m off to sleep. Oh and today’s tally was 450 miles – just for the craic!