Long Day from Nashville to Chicago

We got an early start today and headed North towards Chicago with no particular plans or hurry to get there. Just outside of Louisville, we decided it might be fun to visit Churchill Downs (home of the Kentucky Derby) and found out there was a museum. We arrived there around lunchtime and managed to catch up with a tour that had just left to view the track. It's definitely a sight to behold. The amount of money that goes into a two minute horse race once a year is a little overwhelming.

Next we toured the museum for a while and caught a movie. Not only was the movie well done and insightful, it was presented in one of the most original theaters I've ever seen. it was oval shaped, and had screens around the entire wall. It created a beautiful way of showing panoramic images, including a full 360 degree view of the track. The only improvement that could be made is swivel chairs instead of stools. Other than that, I was really impressed.

After that enjoyable stop, we headed across town to grab lunch at Whole Foods before heading North again. Along the way we passed through Indianapolis, but didn't find a reason to stop. We had an interesting experience with diesel fuel at a truck stop and managed to find out the hard way that the rapid fill pumps for semis don't work well with our truck. We found this out by repeatedly covering both ourselves and the side of the truck in fuel.

After that minor fiasco we headed North and considered a detour through the ghost town of Gary, Indiana before finding that we were forced to make the side trip as a construction detour. I definitely see why it's considered a ghost town at this point. Also of note was that Molly and I had exactly the amount of cash/change necessary for the toll road between the two of us. Navigating Chicago was a whole different beast of its own. Our GPS became useless for a good while as many of the roads it was giving us were low clearance (we need 13' or more) or restricted truck traffic. After winding our way around Chicago towards Evanston (our hotel destination) we thought we had nearly made it when we found our path to the hotel obscured with less that a quarter mile to go. We had to zig-zag our way North a fair number of blocks before we finally found a street that had clearance to get under the Chicago rapid transit rail lines. Don't even get me started on the parking.

At this point we were starving and managed to find a nice little Italian place for dinner. The food was tasty, and cravings for dessert ensued. We wound up at Ben & Jerrys and fixed that problem. The preliminary plan for tomorrow is to park the truck north of town and ride the rapid transit lines into downtown and spend the majority of the day there. I'm excited - first time in the main part of Chicago. This city is huge.