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| Driving along on the road to Kalamazoo |
Another day with lots of driving - 771 kms. Rain and freezing rain this morning but thankfully we were able to drive out of it.
Our trusty GPS sent us on a short cut between two inter-state highways with some nice scenes along the way.
[Dorothy had trouble understanding our Australian gps voice so we switched to an "American female" voice we have dubbed "Hillary" ]
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| GPS "Hillary" |
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| A back road in Indiana |
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| Northern Indiana |
We stopped in Fort Wayne, Indiana for lunch at a Cracker Barrel Restaurant. Our meals came with a complimentary side order of "grits". I have heard of "grits" but I don't know much about it. I asked the rather grand-motherly hostess, assuming she would be an expert. Her surprising response to the question "So what are grits and how are they made?" was "I don't know. I've never eaten the stuff ... I'll call the manager." giving me a nervous look that I might be threatening the security zone. Before the manager arrived, our waitress came by and joined the non-answer. She had never eaten the "grits" either but her boyfriend had and, she volunteered, "he puts butter on it." Now the manager arrived and I repeated my questions, what is it made out of and how should it be eaten. She indicated that she wasn't sure what it was made out of. The ingredients are shipped from head office in Tennessee and made at the restaurant, mainly because head office requires it. She had never eaten "grits" but she had seen others eating it and knew some put brown sugar on it. So ... we have a restaurant that serves a side dish to almost every customer of something that no one is sure what it's made of and none of the servers has ever eaten. Bon appetit.
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| Granny Hostess - makes fire but doesn't eat grits |
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| Franklin - just after having eaten "grits" |
We reached the Detroit area just after dark and driving the ring road around the city took about 2 hours. Picture 5 lanes of traffic (each way), basically bumper to bumper, traveling about 120 km/hr
We reached the border about 7:30 and I had visions of huge line-ups of US Thanksgiving Day traffic but the whole process took less than 10 minutes. When we checked in, the desk clerk took an interest in our traveling companions. While we were at dinner, she presented them with some cookies, shaped like bear paws, and a Christmas card - rather imaginative customer service, we thought.
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| "The boys" with their Christmas gift and card |
hilarious 'grit' venture...unless they have changed the product, their 'grit' dish was what I, as a Canadian prairie girl knew as 'cream of wheat', we use to eat as cereal in the am...maybe it is different now tho...I was informed many years ago, it was called 'grits' cause it supposedly 'stuck to your ribs' for nourishment and gave the 'full feeling' during the meal....your waitress/hostess spoke of it like a 'foreign substance'...LOL....
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