Champaign - Memphis - Oxford - Day 17
We stayed last night in Champaign, IL. Along with adjacent Urbana, IL (home of the University of Illinois) the metro area is about 230,000 people. We stayed in the nice little downtown hotel and drove through campus on the way out of town. It is a big campus with about 44,000 students enrolled. The architecture was appropriate and worked together as a campus - which you can't say for a lot of universities. Our goal, which we made, was to drive through Memphis and get to Oxford, MS. The drive out of Champaign was mostly through farmland. You could tell culturally that you were in the south again. We reached Memphis about 6:30pm and as we crossed the Mississippi River bridge and exited into downtown, came upon a LOT of police cars with flashing lights, including two driving up the exit ramp right toward us. The ramp forked, and one was blocked with about 5 police cars, so we took the right ramp and settled into a great ribs / catfish dinner on Beale St. We assumed that the commotion was about some visiting dignitary. As we left downtown we came across two more blocked streets with two police cars each, lights going. Only the next day did we find out that we were probably the last car off the interstate before it was closed for a few hours by protesters who walked up the ramp!
Urbana Church. Campus Methodist Church, U of Illinois.
Corn looking good in rural Illinois.
Never know what you will find. Areola, Il. Population 2,895. Middle of nowhere.
.Boomland near Benton, MO. It was very large, and maybe year round.
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Missouri.
New Madrid, MO. The major earthquake fault in this area is named for this town on the Mississippi River. I was hoping to find stuff like "Faultline Cafe" - but nothing. Just a small town with a basic view of the river. I did find this interesting yard sign. We (fortunately) have heard almost nothing of Hillary & Donald on our trip.
Beale Street in Memphis.
We ate here and had the pork ribs and fried catfish combo. Really good.Our rack of ribs.
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Beale selfie. No sign at all of protests going on nearby.
