July 4th, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri

July 4th, 2013

Mile 221: Headed to St. Louis, one cup of hotel room coffee under my belt. Raining buckets.

Mile 278- Kentucky! Raining buckets, but a McGriddle helps soften the blow.

Mile 365 Illinois State Line- What wonders await us in the Great State of Illinois?

Mile 369- Largest Superman statue IN THE WORLD!- You might be my favorite stop yet, Metropolis, Illinois. Nashville! With all of your fame and music, you didn’t have two gigantic weathered statues within 3 miles of each other, now did you? First stop of the day post-McGriddle is the booming metropolis of Metropolis, Illinois.  Home to the World’s Largest Statue of Superman! While Thomakaze was struck by the fact that gigantic Superman was wearing gigantic underwear, I was struck by the fact that this small town had no 4^th of July Parade downtown.  This cute little downtown area had nothing happening on Independence Day. And it was sunny, so they didn’t have an excuse. They could’ve slapped an Uncle Sam hat on Clark Kent or something…

 

Mile 372- Big John (Largest Bag Boy Statue IN THE WORLD)- A few miles down the road looming 30 feet over the parking lot of an old grocery store proudly stands Big John. He is actually taller than Superman, but apparently his only super power is carrying groceries, not saving the free world in giant underpants.

Mile 525- In my effort to find some great St Louis bbq, I accidentally type in the wrong address and land us in the middle of one of St. Louis’ lesser known addresses sometimes referred to as burned out crack house. Mr. B was not amused. Hopefully, some ribs will lighten his mood..unless the line is wrapped around the block.   Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Grumps, you didn’t tell me that I should research and find the best BBQ restaurant in St. Louis and it should also be slow at lunchtime and full of empty tables.

And it's 98 degrees.

We are friends again.  OH. MY.LORDY. Thank you for that sweet swine and his delectable ribs whose tender meat melted off the bone and dripped down my chin. Bogarts is NO JOKE and you should definitely go there when in the neighborhood. And they have the longest line for bbq IN THE WORLD!

Mile 528- Checking into swank hotel, All glory, laud, and honor to my hard working husband and his abundance of Marriott points.  Silly mommy, I don’t know why you were stressed out about your larger/louder than life children at the Fairfield Inn in Nashville!, they were permitted to ride on the luggage cart unencumbered. Not here, my sweets. That’s because they had to tell us that. Who knew? It’s cheaper than the fair.  Also, the screech of your child trying to descend an escalator really reverberates off all of that abundant marble.  Should’ve gone with wallpaper, Fancy. You heard it here first.

We shepherd the herd toward the St. Louis Arch (Biggest Arch IN THE WORLD!) to get a glimpse of that magnificent monument. 

There was an airshow going on, so we watched that for a while and then made our way to “culture stage”.  You are not in Marietta anymore.  

We really enjoyed our afternoon in St. Louis and settled in for a great fireworks show. But, do you know I didn’t see ONE person I knew?  I didn’t endanger one neighborhood child with an ill supervised sparkler. I didn’t get to say, “I can’t believe they are going to middle school”, or “She can’t be walking already?!?!?” or “Here’s a front porch rocking chair, Stephanie, you look like you could deliver any day now!” I handed out not one popsicle.  When I finally found a good viewing spot with the girls, it just so happened to be next to a sweaty man from Stone Mountain. I almost kissed him.  But, ew. He was REALLY sweaty.