The Baseball Trip 2015  Day 1

Monday, July 27, 2015

There are only 2 rules on the Baseball Trip:

1) No interstates

2) No chain restaurants.

The rest is happenstance...

Route 66 is a memory...nothing really remains but the fantasy, It seems like a good idea once; you have to travel the original route 66 once in your lifetime. But twice? Most of the route runs parallel to I-55, which begs the question: Why bother? What still does run through cities and towns is littered with tourist traps and vile exploitation like Route 66 Diners and Route 66 ice cream shops and all kinds of souvenir stands and "museums."

But we did do it again, and this is what we saw: corn. Corn, corn, corn. And soybeans. I cannot believe we let people go hungry in this country.

Oh yeah, the we is me and my navigator, Randy. Randy also makes wry observations on the state of humanity.We are on our way to St. Louis to see the best team in baseball (or ever, if you believe the Cardinal fans) play the Cincinnati Reds.

Along the way we like to play a morbid car game where we count signs of the apocalypse, like Walmarts, Curves, or military memorials with howitzers. This trip we will be counting prisons, people riding in golf carts who are not golfing, and women on riding mowers (one of our favorites).

Anyway, one thing we did see was an historic two cell jail house in Gardner, Illinois. Does that count as a prison? Yes, yes it does.

We also saw this:

Random observation from Randy: "I bet this was a barbecue fire."

Anyway, we also saw (I think it was in O'Dell) a woman riding down the street in a golf cart with a young boy in the back. Like it was a car. Why would she do that? I don't know.

But Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, so we decided to check out some Lincoln stuff. There was a prefab "historic village" in New Salem with a statue of Lincoln on his horse. (I hope it was his horse, Honest Abe and all...)

It looks like he's checking his iPhone.

But upon closer examination, he's just reading a book:

Probably The Bible, or a law book. Because, you know, he's Abe Lincoln.

Anyway, we caught a little ferry across the Illinois river which would lead to another ferry across the Mississippi. Except all the ferries across the Mississippi were closed Monday through Thursday. What's up with that?

Ferry across the Illinois River.

River houses.

It really didn't matter - we heard the Cardinal game was sold out. And we were not paying scalper prices for a stadium we have already seen twice. So we bagged St. Louis to look for a campsite. Only Monday evening there was a predicted heat index reading of 109.

The plan was to take the Mississippi River road to a large enough crossroads to find a motel.

And then all hell broke loose.

O I have seen things! O terrible, terrible storm! Torrential downpour, monsoon of Biblical proportion great waves washing over the car blown sideways dodging tree debris vision limited, one and a half hours to travel 25 miles nowhere to stop along two lanes washed over O! where are you Mississippi River biker bar? Where are you Casey's gas-mart? I cannot pull over because there is no over on this god-forsaken highway! Magical text from the ether...how did they get this number? "Severe Threat Alert! Flash Flood Warning this area until 12:45 am. Avoid flood areas." The world as we know it right now is a flood area and there is no high ground.

I have never had a worse headache. I have never seen a storm like this. We drove from the head to the tail of that monster. Even the natives told me they have never seen anything like it. And when it was over, it was still daylight.

Hey, There's a woman on a riding mower!

Favorite Town Name: Godley, IL

                                       Hopedate, IL

Favorite sign:  Corn Crib Stadium

Things we cannot stick around for:  Chesterfield chicken and fish fry.

Women on riding mowers - 1

Prisons - 1

People on golf carts not playing golf - 1

Tomorrow: Fairmount Horse Racing & The Southern Illinois Miners baseball action.