-----A requisite 7:00 wakeup meant we got out of the door at 9:00. We exited Kentucky and entered Indiana for approximately a mile before going back into Ohio, then finally going into Indiana for good.

-----While on the way, we contacted the office of the Indianapolis Indians and inquired about the possibility of purchasing a pennant. Although they sell them, they were currently out of stock, which was alright by our itinerary. The traffic around Indianapolis was bad enough; downtown was not a relished thought. The number of trucks was outstanding, especially dump trucks, who threw up gravel whenever they hit one of the approximately 7.3 million potholes in the greater Indianapolis area. We were stuck behind a convoy of three dump trucks en route to Crawfordsville.

-----Crawfordsville is a sleepy small town of 15,000, and our exit there a little before noon was for the purpose of seeing the Lew Wallace Museum and Study. Wallace, as we would come to learn, was a Renaissance man who was as known for his exploits as a Union General in the Civil War as he was for writing Ben-Hur. After nabbing the last location in the infinitesimally small parking lot, we went into the one-room museum and paid a nominal fee for a guided tour into Wallace's study room.

-----The study is a self-contained building whose main purpose was as a private and secluded area for Wallace in his older years when he was known around the region as a public figure. In it, he indulged in his many passions: writing, reading, sculpting, inventing, violin making, and fishing—just to name a few. Bookshelves full of priceless tomes line the walls, with stained-glass windows and a skylight whose windows could be opened to pump in cool air from the basement.

-----Wallace was a troublemaker and truant in his early years who loved to read and learn and go on adventures but could not stand school. As the son of the Indiana governor, his exploits did not go unrecorded, and as a child he'd regularly forage his way 80+ miles north with traveling loggers (eating squirrels along the way) or attempt to steal a boat to float to the Gulf of Mexico. When he was 16, his father abandoned the idea of schooling him—a cause to which he'd committed vast and ultimately fruitless sums—and turned him loose on the world. (On one occasion, he distracted public attention from a debate opponent by playing tunes on a violin, which led to a fistfight—only to have him and his opponent take the same stagecoach to the next town.)

-----He attempted to become an attorney, but hated it, and ended up serving in the military. He organized absurd numbers of men and became their Colonel in the Civil War, and he ended up becoming the youngest General. His negligence for the chain of command and his tendency to think of orders as guidelines as opposed to rules may have changed the course of history when he—without orders—diverted his men to fight Confederate forces led by Jubal Early outside Washington. Though he lost the battle, he sapped enough men from Early's ranks to initiate a Confederate retreat, and when the two men met years later, Early remarked that he won the battle, but Wallace the war.

-----Wallace would later become an attorney, and he still hated it, but had to keep up appearances. He was the first governor of New Mexico to be fluent in Spanish (which he taught himself as a boy.) He unsuccessfully ran for Senate and ended up becoming best known for his novel Ben-Hur, a story which emerged after a chance encounter with Robert Ingersoll. Wallace's research led him to form the story that would become Ben-Hur. Its sudden and enduring success startled Wallace, but he was able to use the money to construct the study.

-----The study remains as Wallace left it, down to the deep red brick that haven't faded since it was built, as he was extremely attentive to detail. It's a beautiful structure with thousands of details, from the curtains on the bookshelves to the interior arch which frames a recessed seating area to the handles on the doors, angled just so to the point that not only does one not have to bend one's wrist to open it, but one can do so with just a single finger.

-----After leaving the museum area, we found a local Culver's and ordered some burgers to tide us over to dinner in Rockford. The girl who took our order was entirely dull and boring and slightly screwed it up, but they were still good. We trekked on to Illinois, where we gained an hour.

-----Gaining an hour turned out to be quite necessary, as we promptly lost it going through probably the worst-signed road work in the civilized world. Traffic was backed up to a standstill for about five miles, to the point where many locals simply peeled off, went over the grassy median, and drove back from whence they came. But we had no such option. At the end of this tedious process, we found that they'd closed only one of the two lanes, meaning that there was actually no reason for anyone to be stopped! Those of us in the left lane did not know it was closed until too late, and drivers in the right lane were trepidatious when it came to altruistic behavior. In the end, selfishness is what slowed us for so long.

-----We made tracks to the Bloomington area, which we skirted, and then we exited in Normal, the home of the independent-league Normal CornBelters. We inquired about the pennant in their ticket office and were escorted into the stadium—which was in use by two terrible community college teams facing off against each other—where we got the pennant. The lady who procured it from the locked team shop asked us where we were from and where we were headed, and her eyes got extremely wide when she was informed of our ultimate destination.

-----You've not seen corn-themed until you've seen the Corn Crib (and yes, their stadium is called that.) The stairs up? Their fronts are painted with a corn mural only seen from a distance. Their memorabilia? All yellow and green. Their mascots? All bad corn puns. Truly a-maize-ing.

-----We got out of Normal and began the long and straight drive up to Rockford. Our goal was dinner at 15th and Chris in Rockford, and it's tiny—one of the tiniest places I've been to. The entire building was little more than the size of a hotel room and the actual space for customers to walk in and order was perhaps the size of a bathroom. But the smell alone is enough to drive one to pangs of hunger.

-----As we approached the front of the line, we began to be filmed by a fellow who was making a documentary about the revitalization of Rockford, of which the establishment is an integral part. The head chef was ringing up orders at the cash register at that point, for the staff operation seems inspired by musical chairs. My dad got to talking to him about how we'd seen reviews for how good his place was, and when we told him of our North Carolinian origins, it resulted in him whipping out his driver's license to prove it. In a place dominated by locals, he seemed genuinely touched by the fact that we went out of our way to eat there.

-----After placing our orders, we went back outside, where various tables are located, and the fellow with the camera followed us out. He explained his mission and asked us about our travels and how we came to find out about 15th and Chris. We explained our process of scouting out cheap local eateries to avoid national chains as much as possible.

-----As it turned out, the last shot he got was one of me taking out about a fifth of my burger in one fell swoop of a bite. We all got the same thing: "the Wrecker." Grilled mushrooms, onions, lettuce, tomato, an unidentified spiciness, and blue cheese topped it off, and somehow the bun stayed on. The fries were also tremendous, salted and spiced in-house for a potato that could hold its own against dominating flavors. (The fries also gained a following amongst the local bird population, whom my dad fed on a few occasions just to see how excited they got. Fries are apparently some kind of ornithological delicacy.)

-----The filmmaker had told us that Rockford was a big manufacturing hub, and although many of such jobs have since left the country, there were enough for it to still be a significant chunk of the economy. Their survival has been due to extreme specialization; every gear on the Mars rover Curiosity was crafted in Rockford. He also said that, while the city lacked a minor league presence (apparently a sore spot for local sports fans), Beyer Stadium—once home to the Rockford Peaches (of A League of Their Own fame)—was a few blocks away.

-----After polishing off our burgers, we drove down to Beyer Stadium's adjoining school parking lot and walked on the field. All that remains of the original structure is the ticket booth, but the field surface itself is intact and maintained and entirely playable. Plaques honoring the field's unique history led the way to the field, where my mom attempted to get a picture of her "floating" on the base paths. Unfortunately, the rapid-fire picture-taking of our old camera is not on the new, and so to compensate she ran around the bases while I tracked her in a high-definition video.

-----Tomorrow: St. Cloud, Minnesota.