7.21.11 - Defiance in the Heartland

It's official: I'm addicted. I've been guzzling Rockstar Recovery like a dipsomaniac and now I'm paying the price... The newest member of the Rockstar family, Recovery (in the big yellow can) contains many "good for you things" like Electrolytes! B Vitamins! Milk Thistle Extract! 3% Real Lemon Juice! It also has lots and lots and lots of caffeine. My pounding headache can only mean one thing: more Recovery!
We also need to recover from last night's wacky antics so today's day off will be spent calmly driving through America's heartland. Another homecooked breakfast with the Family D (I could get used to this!) and off we go... 
Down to Toledo and into the countryside. Small roads, small farms, small towns. Big leaping deer ornaments on lawns, big guys waving from porches, big freshly mowed fields gleaming bright yellow in the summer sun. Lured by the name and the band of the same, we stop for lunch in Defiance, Ohio. Over the Steak Manhattan at Bud's Restaurant, we talk to the sad-eyed teenage waitress whose annual highlight is the two-week Bible camp she attends in rural Louisiana "but that just happened a couple months ago so now I've got to wait practically a whole year to see my friends again." Small town USA is sometimes best enjoyed through the window of a moving car.
We decide to splurge on some air conditioning tonight. In Marion, Indiana we look for the picturesque old-time town square hotel we saw on the internet only to realize to our dismay that that particular hotel is in Marion, VIRGINIA.  The choices in our Marion are a skanky looking 70's motor inn, several motels whose only drawing point listed on the marquees are "affordable rates" and chain hotels where all the non-smoking rooms smell like smoke. Ooof. See last sentence of previous paragraph.