5 days and 9 States!

We had a great roadtrip.  We left at lunch Wednesday and got to Nashville in time to catch the last show at the Bluebird Cafe.  It is a small venue, but what a treat....we heard four songwriters (one was only 17 and could very well be the next Taylor Swift)  One had written "I love the way you love me" for her wedding, one guy had written Fishin in the Dark, and on and on.  Mike would be at a place like this every weekend if we lived closer to Nashville!  The next morning it was off to Paducah.  I was on a hunt for more Mustard fabric...and it was so funny to me that Hancocks sits right behind a liquor store....is this for the husbands that can't take any more fabric shopping?  We toured the AQS museum (no pictures allowed) and hit two more quilt shops.  I made a pretty good haul, picking up lots of kids fabrics too for nap blankets and baby quilts.  I have to say it was a great shop but Mary Jo's prices are better.  They were cutting orders like crazy and one of the clerks said that probably 60-75% of their business is now online/catalouge orders.

I got nine yards of this mustard fabric with ketchup colored fish bones.  It will be the backing for this new quilt which I am making BIG to fit our bed.  After a mexican dinner and night near the river in Paducah we headed over to St Louis.  I had 11am tickets reserved to take the tram to the top.  You got into these little capsules that only held 5 people at a time and started up the arch.  It was a little like riding a ferris wheel, quite an engineering feat for the mid 1960's,

The purpose of our trip was to visit GP's cousin Johnny.  They were very close growing up and he now lives in Kansas City with his family.  Their son is a freshman at Kansas so we went to the game, he was awarded a scholarship for Petroleum Engineering and was part of a group honored at halftime. 

And we saw a Trader Joes near their house so as we took off Sunday afternoon we stopped in to stock up....we love their cereal, nuts, olive oil, marina, low sugar jelly....and much more.  Hopefully we will get one in the triad area soon.  Its great quality and value!

Then as we mapped our route home we decided to go through Lexington Ky and I realized being a holiday weekend my Aunt and Uncle would probably be at their vacation spot in Augusta.  So sure enough we  contacted them and decided to have lunch.  They live in Colombus, Oh and we haven't seen them since the wedding.  This is my Mom's little sister and it was fun to see them even for a short time.

Then back to NC through the rain bands of tropical storm Lee.  Banjo was very happy to see us.  So if I counted right.....NC, TN, KY, MO, KS, IN, IL, WV, VA.  We would have been in Ohio if we had had time to take this free ferry across the Ohio river here in the background!  Now we are cleaning up the Civic and selling it, able to tell prospective buyers it just had no issues on our trip and got about 35-37 mpg!