A Midwest Road Trip | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming our newest contributor to BCN, Kathy Manos Penn, a native of the "Big Apple", by way of the "Peach City" - Atlanta. Kathy, a former English teacher, authors The Ink Penn blog and is now happily retired from a corporate career in communications.

    My husband and I received an invitation to a party in St. Louis to celebrate the marriage of a friend from his Vietnam days. Since I'm retired and no longer have to worry about using up precious vacation days, we decided we'd make a road trip of it.

    We broke up the nine-hour trip by stopping in Paducah, KY the first night. All we knew about Paducah was that a friend had recommended it as a good stopping point and that it had a Quilt Museum. Granted, we weren't interested in seeing the Quilt Museum, but it seemed as good a place as any to spend the night after driving six hours.

    Paducah turned out to be a delightful small town on the Ohio River, and its quaint downtown reminded me of a miniature Charleston. We ate dinner at Tribeca, a Mexican restaurant that had gotten rave reviews on Trip Advisor. We found it across from the Historic Market House, a building that first made Charleston come to mind, as it was a smaller version of Charleston's Straw Market.

    Hearing live music as we left the restaurant was another echo of Charleston. The difference was that other than restaurants, Paducah's downtown had shut down by six, so we couldn't explore the shops. Instead, we visited the flood wall, a site our hotel staff had recommended. Beyond it, a band was playing by the river, and folks had blankets and chairs set up to catch the tunes.

    We listened to music as we viewed the floodwall murals and the plaques explaining the city's history. Who knew Paducah was a major port at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers and also a railway hub for Illinois Central Railroad? Today, the railway serves chemical plants, granaries, coal and lumber distributors, river ports, and one military base-Fort Knox. Restored locomotives also line a section of the riverfront.

    The flood wall was built in 1939 after the flood of 1937 when the Ohio River rose to 60.8 feet, 17.8 feet above flood stage, and destroyed much of the business district, though many restored historic buildings remain today. The Market House built in 1905 is one as is the River Discovery Center which dates to before the Civil War. Trivia buffs may be interested to know that the town was laid out by William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

    We were astonished to read that Paducah is also the site of a uranium enrichment plant. I'm not sure why that seemed strange to me, but it did. As we drove away, I felt as though I'd encountered a hidden slice of Americana.

    Next up was a nostalgic dinner at Citizen Kane's Steakhouse in St. Louis plus a view of the arch on our way there. Yes, that Citizen Kane. The restaurant, located in a turn of the century Victorian home, serves mouthwatering steaks complete with a Rosebud salad.

    The next day, we had breakfast at Bob Evans, a restaurant we don't have in Atlanta, before touring a nearby town market where we found gooseberry jam and windchimes made from small propane tanks. One of the charms of a road trip is encountering the unexpected.

    We danced the night away at the party at Scott AFB and then departed for Brentwood, TN, where we stopped to spend our final night so we could have dinner with one of my former co-workers. Seeing new sights and old friends made it a five-star trip in our book.