...and so...

"We all know what the root word of Illinois is, don't we?"

Without missing a beat I responded with, "yeah, 'inois' (pronounced annoy--get it, Ill-annoy, stay with me)."

After Tim quit laughing he quipped, "I was thinking 'ill'," then gave me a high five.

That's generally how we feel about traveling through southern Illinois. (Dana, only you can make southern Illinois interesting--I could listen to Donnie stories all day.)

On the first day of most of our road trips (this one being no exception), the goal is to cover as much ground as possible on the way to the first attractions. In other words, cover hours of mind-numbing miles of pavement in order to "start having fun."

Some of the many things we saw:
1.

2. a retired thoroughbred horse farm
3. a bizarre family of 5 children (or hopefully, 4 children and a tag-along-girlfriend/ boyfriend, the way they were mauling each other) all dressed in wide, aqua and white-striped shirts similar to Where's Waldo except blue. I'm guessing the parents (who, oddly were not in stripes) wanted to be able to quickly locate the kids in a crowd.
4. lots of cornfields
5.

6. signs for towns or leading to towns ending in "ville"--Okawville, Addieville, Grayville, Poseyville, Evansville, Lynnville, Louisville, Jeffersonville, Simpsonville, Shelbyville, Southville, Caryville, Knoxville, Sevierville just to name a few...

We ended the day in Gatlinburg, which is a lot like Branson, MO--over-commercialized and crowded. We could have stayed in Knoxville, TN, but we still would have driven through Gatlinburg in order to take a scenic drive through the Smoky Mountains. We dined, this evening, on pan-fried mountain trout and fried catfish at McCutcheon's in Gatlinburg, then walked a bit on "the strip" and found a place with Blue Bell ice cream. I wish St. Louis carried Blue Bell.

In the morning, we will make the leisurely drive through the Smokies on the way to see Craig and Kathey--can't wait!

Yeah, that's about it today.