Our winding down starts winding down

Trefor - Hey, I see a sign for the biggest cross in the Western Hemisphere. It's in three miles, you want to go look at it?
Jim - I am looking at it. [points]

Yesterday we did a few things. We started by going to the Iron Skillet for a mediocre breakfast that came highly recommended. Trefor then got pulled over (by Officer CRay) for going about ten over the limit and got a written warning. Moments later we saw CRay pulling over a semi, so perhaps he had a quota to fill. We stopped in a storefront so Trefor could get himself two pairs of boots and I could think about and eventually decide against buying a shirt (they had one I really liked but not in my size).

Our first premeditated stop was at the Cadillac Ranch, which is a patch of dirt out in the middle of a cow pasture where someone has half-buried several Cadillacs and many people have painted and written on them. It was incredibly windy. We looked at them for a while and then wrote our names and left. When we arrived a trucker was just leaving and when we left three groups of people were arriving (including a trio moving to Virginia). It seems to do well. And deserves to.

The only other thing we'd planned on seeing was the Route 66 Museum/Devil's Rope Museum which is a small room telling the history of Route 66 and a huge room dedicated to barbed wire. We learned all about how it's made and what different kinds of it are called and brands and fence-making. And I use "learned" loosely because it was a giant tightly-packed room and it had far more information than either of us could possibly absorb. We also each drank a bottle of Route Beer 66.

Our major unpremeditated stop was, as previously alluded to, the largest cross in the western hemisphere. There isn't much to say for it other than that it really is huge. Also that it's dedicated to unborn babies and the statue of crying Jesus with an unborn fetus is disgusting and unnecessary.

We've made a major departure from our schedule for the last leg of our trip. Our Branson stay has come undone, and so last night we drove as far towards Nashville as we could and we ended up sleeping in the most terrible motel I've ever stayed in somewhere in Arkansas (which is unimpressive as a state). Today we got up, ate at a Waffle House (which is grand) and booked it over here to my parents' house in Nashville. Along the way we hit the worst traffic we've seen all trip and got stuck for about three hours. It was slow enough that we could get out, walk to the side of the road, pee, and then walk back and find the car in nearly the same place we left it. But now we are here, and we will stay tomorrow and take off the next morning for Virginia where our trip will come to a close. A sweet and gentle ending, from my parents' house to Trefor's.