We are on day five of our March to the South. For some reason, probably shear hope, I thought once we crossed the Wisconsin border into Illinois, the temperature would shoot up into the 60’s and we would crack out the Bermuda shorts, old age reference there, and bask in the warmth of the sun. Error of my ways, forty degrees and no sun yet. Here are things I now know to be truths. When you order a Bloody Mary with a beer chaser south of the Wisconsin border, If you are lucky, you get the Bloody Mary and a full size beer. Most of the time, you just get a confused look. If you try to avoid this confusion and order the classic Brandy Old Fashioned, you will need to explain what brandy is and why that would be in an Old Fashioned. Explaining to them that it is the classic super club way to make the drink, they will ask what in the heck is a super club? We have clearly left the safety of our up North culture and are now learning to adapt.

If you are keeping track of us on your US maps marked “Where in the South are Ken and Deb”, we left the St Louis area this morning, crossed Illinois and Indiana, and are now resting for the night in Louisville, Kentucky. We will lay siege to Louisville tomorrow and then head for a couple of days in Chattanooga, adding Tennessee to our list of states we have overrun. From Chattanooga we will eventually reach Atlanta completing our replication of Sherman’s March to the Sea. Unlike Sherman, we won’t stop there as we intend to eventually reach Daytona Beach before turning back North. I personally intend to continue to ask for cheese curds in bars and maybe even pickled pigs feet just to see if they can figure out from where we hale.

On a reasonably serious note, for those who are following this and waiting for the whimsical surprise, it was Old Louisville tonight. We asked about every employee of our hotel about places to see in Old Louisville only to determine that we might be the oldest residents of Louisville in the hotel and that has only been three hours. Receiving no advice from the bewildered hotel staff but honest denials, we checked the internet and Google Maps and found our way downtown for an incredible walk through several blocks of beautiful stately old mansions dating to the Civil War Era. They sat quietly nestled in boulevard style streets softly lit with gas street lamps. We followed up our walk with a stop at a corner Tavern on the Green for great drinks and very good food.

Tomorrow we have planned a trip to the Louisville Slugger factory and museum as well as a visit to the Kentucky Derby museum and Churchill Downs. I am quite excited to see the World’s largest baseball bat which though not on my bucket list could have been right up there had I known it existed. If you missed the sarcasm there, as Big Bang’s Sheldon would say, bazinga!

We lost an hour somewhere crossing Indiana and have determined we aren’t going to find it, so it may be early back there in Wisconsin but it’s nearing bed time here and we still have that World’s largest bat on deck for us in the morning. I will try to catch up with you after Chattanooga and fill you in with whatever surprises we find there. Until then, we sign off as Kentucky Wild Cats tonight.