<– Day 30 – Monday May 28th: Grilling in the Rain | Day 32 – Wednesday May 30th: Little Town, Big Ideas –>
David, Russ and Ann in front of Russ’ “Alaska Or Rust Shrine”. Russ lives in Paris, Illinois. The Post title is a French translation of the famous line from Casablanca, “We’ll always have Paris.”
Day 31: On Tuesday we drove from Charleston, West Virginia, to Paris Illinois.
On Tuesday May 29th, we drove from Charleston, West Virginia, to Paris Illinois.
On Tuesday, we started from Charleston early, as we had a long drive to Paris. Our first stop of the day was Huntington, West Virginia, for gas. It turns out the city is considered by some to be an epicenter for opioid addiction. We saw this firsthand.
In Huntington, we randomly chose a Speedy Mini-Mart just off the freeway. As I gassed up the jeep, Ann went inside for a bathroom break. Of the 10 people I saw either milling about outside at the edge of the station’s property or having parked and walked inside, 6 looked addicted to something (funky skin color, haunting eyes … something wasn’t right). Inside the Mini-Mart, The conversation between a customer and the cashier included the difficulties of coming down too fast. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
A couple hours later, we headed into the heart of Louisville from the east, then turned north to cross the river into Indiana. This sent our nav system into a panic, partly because, according to our nav, we were not longer on a bridge. Instead, we were driving on the river itself. The nav system restarted navigation several times trying to make sense of the situation. It took a couple miles before everything righted itself.
Sometime later, while still heading north, we spotted a sign for Goat Milk Stuff. The billboards looked intriguing enough to learn more, so we took a short detour.
There are two buildings, one for goat-based health and beauty products, and the other for goat-milk related products and sweets.
The place wasn’t packed with foods, but what was there tasted good. As goat cheese goes, it wasn’t very “goaty”. Instead, the cheese was smooth and tasty. The store offered free samples. We left with garlic goat cheese.
Bob Christy, this is for Mindy, for you 🙂
With our goat needs satisfied, we left for Paris Machine, a business started in 1944 by Russ Lawton’s grandfather. Russ, along with Cowboy, accompanied us on the trip to Alaska last year with Charlene, the yellow Jeepster.
To make sure Ann and I didn’t miss his shop, Russ put out a couple beacons near the entrance.
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