Three years ago today, I set off for a tour of the midwest. 4000 miles of driving. I started in Detroit, then visited 13 states in two weeks, with four days in Chicago - half alone, half with @danthemanmcn. If you want to avoid this thread, mute "giant pizza" for a fortnight...

20.6.17 was a day in Detroit. I stayed at the salubrious Motor City Casino. Even downtown, there's an edge to Detroit, but it has the Motown Museum, downtown monuments to the concept of 'Work' (what else could a massive fist symbolise?) and the odd sight of Canada due south...

The afternoon was a guided walking tour, including some of the fantastic murals in Detroit. The guide was a local attorney, and very good, although the inclusion of his rather nondescript office was a little odd. Anyway, it all deserved following up with a very deep pan pizza.

Fortified by pizza, Tripadvisor persuaded me to visit a Corktown whiskey bar. I popped in for a half hour at 8, and left at 11.45, having been invited hunting by Chuck, and chatted at length to a politics lecturer who'd sat next to me carrying the complete works of Thomas Payne.

The photos of the bar are not mine, but to get an idea of my state when I left - to check out the next morning and drive to Ohio - here's a photo I did take of my hotel as I walked the five or six blocks back to it at midnight.

21/6/17 dawned too quickly for my hangover. I packed queasily, checked out and headed the 60 miles to Toledo. I was halfway there when I thought “It’s so warm. I won’t need that jacket I brought. You know, the one that’s still hanging in the wardrobe with my shirts. In Detroit.”

So why Toledo? I could claim Lake Erie. Or that it's the biggest city in Ohio not beginning with C. But in fact it was the Maumee Bay Brewing Co's Cheese Beer Soup.
Yes.
Cheese. Beer. Soup.
And it was wonderful. As was the Buffalo Chicken. Thank you Toledo.

22/6/17 & I was finally over my hangover. Picked up coffee and donuts from a downtown Toledo hipster place that was playing The Smiths, and had breakfast by a cloudy Lake Erie, then headed off to Chicago, held up briefly by a proper old school level crossing on the edge of town.

I had always planned to stop off in South Bend, Indiana for lunch. Partially because it’s called South Bend and partially because it’s the home of Notre Dame University, alma mater of Jed Bartlet. Criminal lawyers will understand why I nearly changed plans on seeing these signs:

Notre Dame is a Catholic University, in the town of South Bend (pop 100k), about 100 miles from Chicago. It has an 80,000 seat (yep) stadium on campus and (honestly) a 1:7 scale replica of the Grotto of Lourdes. On my guided tour was a poster thanking Father Ted, which was nice.

23/6/17 Chicago, after a great drive in along the lakeside the previous evening. My friends were arriving later, so I explored, particularly enjoying an office block with a church on top and Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate (spot the photographer).

Also in Chicago:
"Knowing Me Alan Partridge,
Knowing You, Abraham Lincoln. Aha!"

24/6/17 - Chicago Art Institute is a wonderful place, and home to some favourites. I'd seen American Gothic in the Royal Society's superb "America After the Fall" exhibition a few weeks before, but it was good to catch up on its home turf! Nighthawks was a delight.

25/6/17 - Last day in Chicago. And a boat trip amongst the skyscrapers was an absolute must, followed up by the gorgeous old Chicago Library, now Cultural Centre.

The Cultural Centre was hosting a remarkable exhibition of what would usually be mundane - college doors. Painted in 1971 for Malcolm X College in Western Chicago, the doors had been removed when the college relocated.

26/06/17 - ROAD TRIP PART II. After a quick tour of an old style Options Exchange in Chicago, we headed northwest. Lunch was in Madison, with a wander round the capitol. Oh, and an afternoon roadside stop where everything was cheese flavoured. They like their cheese in Wisconsin.

And in the evening of 26th June, we arrived in Minneapolis, largely because I had an appointment with some very exciting maps the next day. But a wander through the city as the sunset meant that we chanced upon this mural to one of its favourite musical sons.

27/06/17 was a very exciting morning. I had arranged to view some maps from the collection of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota and several pieces of 500 year old cartographic history were brought out for me to look at. It was astonishing.

The first was a portolan chart from 1424. Portolans were used to navigate from port to port, rather than to give a realistic picture generally. This shows the Atlantic, and possibly Greenland & Cape Verde. It was the first map to show "Antilla" as a landmass across the ocean.

My favourite was the Canepa Portolan from 1489, with its beautiful illustration and vivid colours. It's a halfway house between fantastical maps and a true guide. Before any nationalists get too excited, the George Crosses all over the eastern Mediterranean are Genoese...

And a few more of that map, because it's my thread and I love it - the Red Sea is great, and Northern Germany is upside down for legibility. There are better pictures on the library's website at http://gallery.lib.umn.edu/exhibits/show/portolan-charts/1489-canepa-portolan-chart

Finally, this 1507 Waldseemuller gore - a flat version of a globe, to be formed around a sphere. Waldseemuller’s map is the first to label “America”. I also saw (but couldn’t photograph), the 12ft x 6ft Ricci Map of 1602 – the earliest map made in China to show the Americas.

Lunch on 27/6/17 was in exotic Fargo, so named because of what it looks like the railway line does. We dined at the Wurst Beer Hall, which I have to go back to as the fact we were driving meant I couldn't have the "Bacon Flight with Beer Pairings", and had to settle for sausages.

After trekking across a slice of North Dakota enlivened only by a giant buffalo, we stayed the night in rainy Bismarck, where more beer and pizza was accompanied by the worlds finest trivia game, “North Dakota Trivia”. It made learning fun.

28/6/17 - After another encounter with a giant bovine (Salem Sue, the Largest Holstein in the World), we crossed North Dakota to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in the badlands. It's home to some spectacular views, and oodles of prairie dogs.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is lovely. There are herds of wild horses and bison, but the prairie dog “towns” as they’re called, are something else. The air is filled with the sound of squeaky dog toys...

After the Badlands, we turned south, had lunch in the most desolate place ever, and drove through the geographic centre of the US, at Belle Fourche, ND. A quick look at dodgy tourist trap Deadwood, and we were nearly at Mount Rushmore.

And then, in the late afternoon of 28th June 2017, we finally reached Mount Rushmore. And it's pretty impressive, as you might expect. By this point I'd travelled nearly 2,500 miles through 8 states. It was well worth it. And I've still got 5 more states and 1,500 miles to go.

As an adjunct to Mount Rushmore, nearby is another remarkable monument, or at least the start of one. Another mountain is being sculpted into a statue of the Lakota Chief, Crazy Horse, who fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The second photo shows how it will look when done.

29/06/17. If I've given the impression that American Roadtrips are all glamour and giant Presidential Heads, that may be misleading. Sometimes you wake up to a bleak view of a rainswept Taco Bell, breakfast on dodgy looking biscuits and gravy and have to drive 850 miles to Omaha.

First stop, however, was more fun. We visited a (decommissioned) Cold War Minuteman missile silo, and the nearby visitors centre. I held in my had a piece of nose cone. I had become a bit of Death, Destroyer of Worlds. Nearly.

500 miles east on I-90 was a true oddity, Porter Sculpture Park, right by the interstate and run by the artist from a caravan. Real 'S Town' feel to it, if you've heard the excellent podcast (if not - get on with it).

And a few more of those, because they were sinister and captivating. The human figure was inside the giant bovine head. Naturally. And the surrounding sky feels enormous.

And then in Iowa we hit some very bad weather, passing through Sioux City with tornado warnings going off around us, and cars parked under freeway bridges. It cleared up as we passed the cloudfront and entered Nebraska, and then the thunderstorms returned in Omaha.

30/06/17 I was alone again ( @danthemanmcn abandoning me to fly back to NYC). I explored Omaha and its sweet downtown park with unique benches, before heading down to the banks of the Missouri (where Lewis & Clark landed), and across the bridge to Iowa. And then off to Kansas.

5 hours driving, a lunchtime curry in Topeka, and a misleading sign for El Dorado later, I found myself in Wichita, Kansas where "The Keeper of the Plain" guards the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers, and Glen Campbell's Lineman haunts the railyard. Probably.

1st July 2017. And somehow, I had the feeling I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Into Oklahoma, I perplexed the natives by stopping at a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere - an experience enhanced by seeing someone go in before me in a cowboy hat. And then obviously I had to find a place where I would be 24 hours (and 14 minutes) from Tulsa. By foot, anyway.

When I got to my Tulsa hotel after lots of driving, keen to relax by the pool, I learned that it was hosting FYWROK*, the Midwest's largest street punk festival. *sigh*
So I went for a wander around the town, which has a Route 66 thing. And that's about it.

*Fuck You We Rule OK

2/7/17 - My last full day of roadtrip. Tulsa to Kansas City, MO, beginning with a stretch of Route 66. It no longer exists as a road of itself, but much of it is part of other roads which retain the oddities - like the Blue Whale of Catoosa and its beturtled swimming pool.

I got my Twix on Route 66.

Before I left London, I'd booked tickets for Major League Baseball on my last day of holiday. Kansas City Royals v Minnesota Twins. 7.30pm, Sunday 2nd July 2017. I'd tried to get to an MLB game for ages - even gone to a game in Washington in 2014 that was rained off as I arrived.

This time the weather was great, I was arriving into Kansas City around 3pm. Plenty of time. I checked into my hotel, had a bit of lunch and looked up my options for getting to the stadium while I dreamed of foot-long chilli dogs and nacho hats. Then it all went horribly wrong.

There was no info on the game. One at lunchtime, yes, but not in the evening. Then it dawned on me. The ticket site I'd bought from had sold me them AT LONDON TIME, not local time. 1.30pm, not 7.30pm. FUCK.

Instead, I ate lots of Tex-Mex and drank pints of Margharitas.

*FIN*