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Dang these here "Baymont" motels are comfy oh yes indeedy.. I was laying
all quiet in bed hoping RK would forget to wake up, and I could stay
here just a bit longer.. no luck.. she was out of her pit & switching
on the daylight at some scary pre 9am hour.. ok, I guess we have
touristing to do, better get with the program...
We made sure last night's motel was close by to Spring Hill, home of the Saturn Car Corp., where we wanted to take the factory tour. RK owns a Saturn and whilst admitting that it's a bit sad to want to see how it was made, she found the lure of the free factory tour irresistable.. We got frighteningly lost on the way to the plant, which landed us a 30 mile detour on the freeway, that's what we get for approaching on a sneaky minor road and not the tourist friendly freeway. We managed to get on the 1pm tour which isn't bad as they normally recommend reserving a place in advance. |
 You're not allowed to take pictures in the saturn plant (ahem) |
 You're not allowed to take pictures in the saturn plant (ahem) |
The tour itself is pretty cool, you're taken via bus to the assembly
plant, during which time you're given some background insight into Saturn's
tree hugging eco friendly philosophy.. once at the plant you're given
protective eye glasses and loaded onto a trolly car thing which takes
you through the factory whilst the guide explains what you're seeing,
the vibe in the plant was pretty cheerful compared to some factory
environments I've been in. The employees are encouraged to wave at the
tour, which made for a funny sight as heads ducked out of half built
cars to give a jaunty wave and then carried on working.. now, if
only they coud be encouraged to wear gnome hats or deelie
boppers or something the surreal quotient would be just about right. The
actual assembly process is great, cars wander about the place in various
states of completion, sometimes at ground level, sometimes overhead, but
always moving at a pace that guarantees 977 per day roll out the back
door (aka "Inspiriation Point").
At the end of the tour you're allowed to keep your Saturn brand eye protectors (whoo!) and sent on your way, not a bad free 90 minutes. |
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Baring in mind we need to be in Columbus Ohio by 4pm Friday, we have to
tourist in a northerly direction from now on, so we decided to
head up to "The museum of beverage containers and advertising" just
north of Nashville.
TMOBCAA was started by some kid called "Tim" who was introduced to the hobby of can collecting by his uncle.. before long he had filled his bedroom and was working on filling the family den with old cans.. his mother's patience ran out, and his dad bought him a run down trailer to keep his cans in.. sure enough that was soon full and so they decided to do the job properly, hense TMOBCAA. Thousands upon thousands of beer & soda cans on display in alphabetical order become strangely fascinating when viewed up close.. they didn't have any UK originated cans except the legendary "Party 4" which hasn't been seen in any form by me for years.. I must post them a "Lilt" can.. |
 How many cans?.. |
 God bless the 70`s.. |
Next up we'd planned to do the Colonel Sanders KFC museum in Corbin
Kentucky, then zip up to Elizabethtown for the Coke bottling plant
and a privately owned coke museum. But true to form we got carried
away playing "Guess the Japanese Sports Cars domestic name," a new
game invented by us, which didn't catch on.. and went straight past
our turning, landing up 40 miles off target. This meant we were 120 miles
away from the KFC museum with less than 2 hours until it closed.. we decided
to carry on and not bother trying to get to Elizabethtown, as we've done
enough Coke Corp touristing this trip and no chicken spottin' at all.
Consulting the AAA guide we discovered that Corbin's not only the birthplace of KFC but it has the western hemisphere's only "Moonbow," a night time rainbow created by the mist thrown up by a 125 foot wide 65 foot high waterfall in the Daniel Boone national park.. now, dunno about you but just the word "Moonbow" was enough to pull us in.. heck we drove 150 miles for a Kewpie burger last week.. Luckily for us tonight is a full moon so once we'd found a motel (Baymont again, $42.. bargain.) we headed up to the park to revel in Moonbow... naturally on the way we serenaded each other with Moonbow tunes.. "Blue Moonbow" "Walking on the Moonbow" "Bad Moonbow Rising" "Blue Moonbow over Kentucky" "By the light of the silvery Moonbow" ..you get the drift. |
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There has been a drought in this part of the world for over a month now,
which means all the rivers are running a tad low, this meant that the waterfall
whilst impressive to see wasn't throwing up enough spray to form a moonbow.
Dammit.. moonbow no show.. no no moonbow... we tried & failed to take some long exposure pix with RK's camera in manual mode but it wouldn't let us, they keep this park open until 3am on the 4 days around a full moon, pretty cool of them I say, shame we didn't get to see the moonbow itself. On the way out we peered through the gift shoppe window and saw postcards of a fully functioning moonbow and realised that we had actually seen a baby low light moonbow over the river, but it wasn't the multicoloured fairyland we were expecting/hoping for. (Must have said "Moonbow" 500 times in the last 6 hours.. great new word..) We travelled over 450 miles today, and got a fair amount of touristing in, not bad.. tomorrow we'll do the KFC museum, Colonels grave & flee back to Columbus. G'nite Y'all!
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 Moonbow propaganda. |