Reflections Upon a Road Trip to Florida

Reflections Upon a Road Trip from Minnesota to Florida and Back Again.

• There is always another truck up ahead.
• Beware of pickup trucks with massive dangling metal testicles.
• Obesity begins at Cracker Barrel restaurants.
• Jesus is coming back to Georgia.  Soon.
• Jesus is Lord in Tennessee (and "you" know it).
• The Federal Government should "adopt a highway"--in fact, the entire Interstate system--and FIX it!
• Georgia and Tennessee have a rather alarmingly large number of place names ending in "hootchie."
• The highest point in the entire state of Illinois is probably the freeway interchange where I-39 crosses I-80.
• The "Nashville Skyline" is not worth the wait on the crumbling freeway.
• "Road Construction" means orange drums and abandoned backhoes.
• The worst road in the world is I-57 in Illinois.

• Motels have been renamed "Inns"--and $30 has been added to the price of a former "motel" room to pay for this upgrade in nomenclature.  
• There are "adult superstores" in Wisconsin and Georgia, but nothing "adult" in between.
• Florida's entire GDP is dependent upon revenue earned in other states and spent in Florida.
• Some Charlestonians still refer to the Civil War as "the recent unpleasantness."
• Beware of two trucks in the fast lane trying to pass a third truck:  traffic will back up for miles.
• Avoid Paducah.
• It is possible, in Georgia, to get an entire meal made of pecans.
• A bunch of casinos in Wisconsin are operated by the rather infelicitously-named "Ho-Chunk Tribe."  
• Different states have different rules about advertising along interstates.  Georgia is especially billboard-egregious: guns, Jesus, adult toys, pecans, spinal adjustments, self-storage, mattresses, trucks and chicken fingers appear to be the major products available in the Peachtree State.
• White tourists are welcome in Charleston.  If you're black, you can visit, but you have to sell Gullah products to white tourists.
• Florida has no farms and no creatures, other than people and their pets, whose native habitat is not a swamp.
• The border between the "South" and the "North" is somewhere around Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
• It is SO good to be back in the North.