Vacation's over

Things learned while traveling:

You have to be 52 inches tall to operate a go-kart solo at Kartway in Eagle River, Wisconsin. The grandson made it by a hair.

Illinois is an incredibly boring state to drive through, and apparently the construction on I-90/I-39 through Rockford is never going to end. As far as I can recall, it's been a construction zone continuously since 1990.

The cheapest gasoline between here and Upper Michigan is being sold in Indiana.

Kentucky is a remarkably clean state. So is Tennessee. Either people don't litter much, or it gets picked up really fast. Or both.

Waffle House pays its employees in cash. Really. On payday they're handed an earnings statement telling them what their gross pay was and what's been taken out for various deductions (e.g., income tax) and given their net pay in actual U.S. currency. No check, no electronic deposit, just actual money. What a radical concept. (And, for what it may be worth, the Waffle House at Exit 110 along I-24 in Tennessee is hiring.)

I finally had a waffle at a Waffle House. It wasn't bad. Considering that I've been eating at Waffle Houses since 1969, I guess it was about time.

Reenactors exist who actually portray the winning side in the Civil War. Up until I stopped at Stones River National Battlefield, every Civil War reenactor I'd ever seen was dressed in butternut gray and worshipped at the shrine of the glorious Lost Cause. Stones River had a group of Union infantry reenactors demonstrating infantry tactics, which seemed to involve standing upright and serving as human targets while firing at the other guys, who presumably were doing the same thing -- if that was standard practice, it's moderately amazing that the death rate from gunshot wounds was as low as it was considering how many rounds were fired in a typical battle.

Georgia still has the worst drivers in the country. Had a totally smooth trip home until I got south of Ringgold, and then all the crazies behind the wheel started coming out of the woodwork: the jackrabbits who want to zigzag at 90 mph because they absolutely cannot stand to be behind anyone at any speed, the morons who want to imitate rocks while crawling down the hammer lane, the idiots who can't figure out just which lane they want to be in so try to straddle two, the distracted fools with cell phones in hand . . . the usual suspects were all out in full force.

Our mailman's idea of a "hold" order for mail delivery is still to keep cramming it into our mailbox until nothing else will fit. Fortunately, it's a large box, although some of my magazines are looking a tad wrinkled.