Well, whether we earned dessert or not, we each had one at dinner last night in Knoxville. We ate at Chesapeake’s, recommended to us as the best seafood restaurant in town. It was like déjà vu seeing all the maps, buoys, and mounted trophy fish that you might see in a restaurant in Annapolis! We shared some oysters and Tom had sauteed soft shell crabs, Paula had skewer-grilled shrimp and for dessert Tommy had Slower Delaware pie, a wicked combo of Oreo crust, coffee ice cream infused with Kahlua, and Chantilly Cream drizzled with chocolate fudge. Paula had strawberry short cake made the traditional way. We are off to a very bad start as regards trying to eat lightly on this trip.
We made an early start with coffee in the room and leftover shrimp and cornbread for breakfast. Paula drove, and was tested by rolling hills, climbs and descents and sharp (to her!) curves on our way out west. Nothing like driving the mountain roads to D.L. Bliss State Park in Tahoe, but a start. In the car, we listened to Billon Dollar Whale, a book about international confidence man and shyster Jho Low, who stole billions of dollars and got away with it.
We stopped to eat lunch at Griddles, a locally owned, very down-home, seat yourself lunch spot. As we ate, we saw bolts of lightning out the windows and heard sharp cracks of thunder. A major storm was rolling through.
After lunch we ran for the car (Tommy driving now) and were on the road for about 5 minutes in soaking rain when our phones alarmed TORNADO WARNING for our immediate area. We looked around but failed to see a funnel or debris or flying cows, so we continued on slowly. All drivers were creeping through intermittent deluges of rain so hard Paula felt like we were in a carwash. The rain cleared about 30 minutes before we arrived at Evansville, but signs of the storm’s passage were everywhere: limbs being cleared from the road by highway crews, leaves and small debris on the sidewalks, and minor flooding on some roads.
We parked just off Main St. and walked around the downtown area. Some streets were closed off due to a huge construction project of unclear purpose. All the cranes and heavy equipment were abandoned and the workers absent due to the storm. There were few people about which gave the area a deserted feel, although Evansville is the 3rd largest city in Indiana. We found a coffee shop and got warm mochas to sip as we walked the sopping streets, occasionally dripped on by tree rain.
The architecture of Evansville puzzled us. There were several ornate and beautiful public buildings dating from the late 1800’s: the old post office, the courthouse, the sheriff’s station and jail.
However, these were surrounded by some ultra-modern and angular apartment buildings, along with businesses of varied and unharmonious construction. We didn’t know what to make of it.
Of course, because of time constraints and the forecast of more weather to come, we didn’t visit the riverside walk, nor the parks or the zoo, so perhaps we got a skewed view of the city from our short exploration of the downtown on and around Main St. Taking to the highway again towards our hotel, we saw many restaurants, chain stores like Ross and Auto Zone, car dealerships lining the way. So clearly there are lots of people here, even though we saw few!
Tomorrow, we hope to get an early start and drive about 160 miles west to St. Louis and explore there a bit on foot. After we finish our explorations, we’ll continue driving until we reach tomorrow night’s destination, Warrenton, Missouri.