West Memphis? !

Excellent day, odd finish...
Last night, Terry facebook-chatted with an old friend who grew up in Portsmouth.
You have to see the murals, she said. Everyone goes to Portsmouth to see the murals. This morning we spent an hour admiring the murals.
A muralist from Lafayette, LA spent 10 years, ending in 2002, painting the city's history in a series of about 50 panels. They adorn the city's floodwaters that fronts the Ohio River... a third of a mile long, 20-is feet high. (He has actually finished the flood wall and is working back into downtown, muralizing the sides of buildings.)
The work is astonishing, as is the city's history. The city once had a steel mill, a number of shoe factories, the world's largest manufacturer of shoe laces and a uranium enrichment plant and a number of other significant industries.)
Roy Rogers grew up there as did major league baseball figures, Branch Ricky, Gene Renae and a number of others.
In the 1950s, Portsmouth was everything a small city should be. Most of the manufacturing is gone now and a once-bustling downtown now bustles a lot less. It is a microcosm, in that sense, of US cities -- especially those across the upper midwest.
-- Crossing the Ohio (great bridge, huge river), we became aware of light rain and lowering clouds. After a brief conversation,  we agreed to abandon the twisty route we had mapped. Instead, we headed for Lexington.
After a brief stop at the Rupp Arena (UK basketball icon), we headed out toward Versailles. Following the miles of plank fences through thoroughbred horse country, we were dumbstruck by the barns, houses, horses, pastures and paddocks.  Most notable on our brief tour was Keeneland Farms.
We made our way to the Woodbridge Reserve distillery, declined the hour-long tour and contented ourselves with -- oh, I don't know... maybe a hundred pix.
-- Back on our two-wheeled steeds, we headed south through downtown Versailles. You guessed it, another picture-perfect town.
-- We followed the Kentucky Bourbon Trail the length of the Blue Grass Parkway, resolved to come back for a Kentucky -only vacation.
--Our original goal for the day had been Gadsden, AL but the amended route found us ending the day in Memphis.
Jessica (She Who Generally Knows Best) volunteered to call around and find us a room while we ate dinner. And so she did.
However,  my GPS maps are sketchy-at-best in the Eastern Time Zone. It's a Garmin thing. Terry's maps were fine, which meant he had some idea where he was going to exit Memphis freeways in the dark; I did not.
He made the turn; I did not.
He stayed in one of the rooms Jessica reserved. I'm in a Super 8 in lovely downtown West Memphis.
Jeff made it safely home today. Terry will finish the trip in Plano tomorrow. I'll be home in Kilgore, drafting some end-of-trip observations.

Monday night in Portsmouth, OH. Tomorrow, Kentucky and Tennessee, if the doggone rain will give us a break.
If we get more rain, we'll turn east and look for a faster,  straighter way home.
In between rains, today was a terrific day.
We went over to a Titusville park to photogtaph an oil well replica to prove we were really here.
We didn't go to the Drake museum.
On the way, we stumbled across a plaque noting that (John?) Heisman was from Titusville. Grat coach, apparently has a little award named after him.
Then we found a plaque noting that (Someone) Tarbell, Abraham Lincoln's biographer, was from Titusville.
Motoring through Franklin, just down the road, we found a plaque saying the real Johnny Appleseed (Chapman, I think ) once lived there.
Then we discovered we were less than 20 miles from THE NFL HALL OF FAME. Yeah, we detoured over to Canton.
What a fascinating place.  The memorabilia alone is worth the price of admission. But, wow, the hall with busts of all the inductees is much more than I expected.
Heading south from there,  we passed through Lancaster, OH -- a beautiful town.
Seems like we stumble across one of those every day since we left northern Ontario.

Observations
--At dinner. we found our waiter has family in Texas... a sister in Tyler. Then we found he grew up on Silver Falls Rd in Longview, very near Terry's former residence.
Cody works at a locally-owned pizza place, PaulsPizza, that offers calzone with buttery, flaky crust. Good stuff.
-- My riding suit was stronger than today's rain. You can't believe how happy I am to say that.
--There are many places to go barefoot.  A $58 motel room is not one of them.

Despite the persistent rain, yesterday -- Sunday -- turned out interesting.
The rain. We've had rain 6 of the 9 days so far and today -- Monday -- offers at least some showers.
We're in Titusville, PA, the birthplace of the oil industry. The Drake discovery well completely changed the American industrial landscape. Coming from Kulgore, I'll consider this a pilgrimage. Maybe. Sort of.
-- We blew by the Erie Canal yesterday, the remnant from America's westward expansion. The canal linked the coast to the Great Lakes and made agriculture in the Northwest territories, now the upper midwest, practical.
It was on my to-do list since childhood but a deluge is not good for sightseeing.
-- I've seen thousands of US and Canadian communities from the back of a bIke and I maintain a list of places I'd like to come back to.
Corning NY is now on that list . Downtown is an assemblage of preserved buildings from the 19th century.  There's the Rockwell art museum, Corning Glass and graceful lawns shaded by elms and locusts.
-- Google it: 1000 Islands.  Awesome.
-- Today, Jeff heads home by way if US 6 and Terry and I start working our way south. In the rain.