Mission Accomplished

4809 miles (7739 km) on my first USA Road Trip!
Not too shabby...

We have done it: we arrived in Chicago on Tuesday afternoon. Our iron steed is still "in optima forma" and we aren't doing too bad ourselves either :-)
But lets go back to where I left off, Memphis. Of course known as the home of "the King", but we were there to visit Shosh's family. So we stayed with her grandmother, aunt and three cousins. The first days we just relaxed, talked, took a dip in the swimming pool, had a couple of beers and so on.
But on Wednesday we had the best day... we went to the Bigfoot Lodge and afterwards to Beale Street. What is the Bigfoot Lodge? Well, nothing extraordinary except that the portions are big (both drinks and food and they serve the biggest hamburger in the world!!! And if you finish it in under an hour it is for free... Far before we even arrived in the US I decided I wanted to do this extremely American thing. So I accepted the challenge and a mere 40 minutes later my Sasquatch Burger arrived!

And you know what I had a hard time finishing almost half of it... haha! The most amazing thing is that one of America's competitive eaters finished that entire thing in 7 min 36 sec.!?! Can you imagine? I had the leftovers for both lunch and dinner the next day. Afterwards we went out for a couple of drinks on Beale Street. It happened to be Wednesday which is biker night, so the entire street was filled with motorcycles, adding to the great atmosphere on this street.

On Friday morning we headed for Atlanta. An easy ride and we arrived at 19.00 at Rodney's place. He lives in Midtown which is a beautiful part of town. Lots of nice eateries, bars, coffeeshops, a big park and so on. Soon after getting there we headed for a couple of bars to catch up on stories and drink a couple of beers. Great night!! The next day Rodney wasn't feeling too well and Shosh and I wanted to explore Atlanta a little. So we went downtown and visited the Dome, the CNN tower, Bicentennial Park and the Coca-Cola Museum. Of course you can do tours in every single one of them, but we aren't that rich so we stuck to buying a combo-ticket for the Coke Museum and the Atlanta Sea Aquarium.



That night we went out for pizza and another drink, but had a relatively quiet evening. The next day Rodney brought Shosh and me to the Aquarium. We spent a good three to four hours in there admiring all of the different fish and other animals. It is a beautiful aquarium and definitely worth a visit. Piggy enjoyed it a lot as well, although at times he was afraid the fish saw him as food...


In the afternoon the three of us went to see the new Batman movie - American Style: So an enormous drink and a huge bucket of popcorn :-)
On Monday we left Rodney and Atlanta and drove halfway to Chicago. It was a long drive (about 400 miles) but we were rewarded with a beautiful campsite at Hardy Lake.
The next day we drove the remaining bit to Chicago and arrived at around 15.00 at Sophie's parent's place (Sophie lived in Kunming with us for the last year). More about Chicago next time! We'll stay here till Friday morning when we'll fly to New York.

Before I say goodbye I have to say one more thing: Thank you very much Collin!!! Without your little, but strong, 1993 Toyota Pickup Truck this trip would have been impossible! Cheers (as you always say...)!

Dat was ie dan weer voor deze keer!
RSP