The Last Stretch From South Carolina

Finally, finally, we were heading home. We had a new energy and even attitude, although the morning nearly started off rocky when Emily unassumingly said "At least there's not a cat outside". She happened to say this as I was opening the curtain, and as I looked, and then looked again, out of my mouth flew "oh my God, Emily, it's a $%&* cat!". I could not believe my eyes, but yet another stray cat, in a whole different state in the parking lot of our hotel. What were the odds? We pretended it didn't happen for the sake of all involved and moved on in our day.

Driving on led us to stop for gas and food and while we had vowed not to eat gas station food, I had a feeling about this place called Buster's, which was attached to the gas station we had stopped at.


It looked harmless enough, so we took a peek, and found it to be somewhat irresistible. I mean, the entire menu consisted of highways surrounding the area.



I got the salad bar, which was...well, it was a bus.



As you can see, there were all kinds of signs hung all over the place, and it was fate that the waitress sat us right under this one:


I'll never laugh at that sign again. And we were off. Before we left Illinois, we got to see one more major attraction, the Megatron cross. That's right, I said it. Look at this thing.

For perspective, check out the billboard underneath it. We got pretty excited about this.

And then it was back to Wisconsin. We were on the look out for a really good cheese place. I was on a mission for cheese curds, and I got some here.

Needless to say, there was a pretty thorough excitement in the air to be back where snow is normal and cheese is understood. I think we were also just happy to be out of the car for a bit.



And then the final push home left us deliriously happy. I think I may have given Emily the impression that I was highly insane when I started screaming while listening to the song called "Effington" by Ben Folds. As I was listening to the lyrics, it occurred to me that he shared our childish enthusiasm for such a name for a town, and even talked about going through Normal, IL (this is the point at which I started screaming). Could it be? Listen to the very first thing he says in this clip.



Yes, that's it! He said it was about Effingham! He just changed the name for the song. Brilliant! We actually came up with the same conclusion as Ben Folds. There was something energizing about that. Wow, Ben. I feel very close to you now.

So we went back and listened to it again, not only because I got a kick out of it, but because she needed to understand what I was freaking out about so that I could drop the crazy status quickly.

And then, to sum up the ride, we played (Ben Folds, of course) "Landed". It was the perfect ending to a mostly great trip.

For the crazy things we noticed and said along the way, see next blog entry.