Audubon

All these years I've been complaining about the desolate drive through southern Illinois to St. Louis, when we could instead have been following the footsteps of John James Audubon (and friend D., the Carolina Kantian) to this lovely state park south of Evansville, Indiana, hiking and picnicing and birding, instead of grousing about the tacky Interstate rest areas and their tacky patrons. It's another wonderful bequest of FDR's New Deal, a project of the Works Progress Administration and civilian conservation corps, dedicated in 1939.

Stopping here adds less than half an hour of driving time to the trip. The Pennyrile Parkway and US 41 may not be Blue Highways, in William Least-Heat Moon's sense of the term, but they worked for me today. Live and learn.

OK, I-64 here I come - tanned, rested, and ready.