The owners of the hotel in Union City were renovating. They were going through all 84 rooms and removing the carpet and putting in Luxury Vinyl Tile. Their son was helping as well. The room they were currently working on was between our room and the parking lot so we chatted with them as we went out for dinner and back, and again as we prepared to leave this morning. He and his wife ride a Harley so he and John had bikes in common and their son geocaches. We had a few nice visits.

The gals in the breakfast room were also friendly and found out we geocached so the one lady says, “You have to go to Metropolis. The Superman Fesitval is on this weekend.” It is only about an hour and a half from here. Well. I loved Superman as a kid, so that became a must see.

The other lady told us about a geocache in a cemetery that was very unique and was also in the direction we planned to drive. We had no real plans for sightseeing today and only had a three hour drive to Evansville if we just drove so we were happy to have some diversions. We had just planned to find some geocaches to do along the way anyway because today was to be a Three State Day.

Union City is about 11 miles south of the border between Tennessee and Kentucky and the geocache was in Mayfield on the Kentucky side – which gave us state number 8.

We had a thunderstorm at 1 am that continued unabated for about an hour. There was only a few seconds now and again between the loud rumbles and lightning flashes. Most of the hour was just a steady rolling thunder. It was quite something. John slept right through it. It was very overcast as we left the hotel and the rain began shortly thereafter. While we were in the cemetery it just poured.

This is the information that was given for the geocache site: “Commissioned by Colonel Henry G. Wooldridge and built over the course of seven years until Wooldridge’s own death on May 30, 1899, the monuments commemorate family members and other loved ones Wooldridge lost over the course of his lifetime. After more than a century of visitation by a public fascinated by the spectacle, the site has acquired an unofficial, completely disconcerting name: “The Strange Procession Which Never Moves.”

Prompted by no one but his own aching heart, the man spent his last years pouring his fortune into immortalizing all that was irretrievably lost in stunning fashion. Unfortunately, this gesture was just as fundamentally lost on its earliest viewers, who mistook his monument as a literal money pit worthy of attempted plundering (the deer’s antlers for example have been broken off), rather than appreciating it for the gorgeously metaphoric treasure chest it simply is. 

Populated with likenesses of those from Woolridge’s past, including a childhood sweetheart or his great-niece (depending on the lore), all of his sisters, his horse named “Fop,” plus his mother, brothers, as well as other creatures great and small who had been close to his heart. And while it may look like a small, very creepy private cemetery within the larger Maplewood Cemetery, Wooldridge is the only person actually entombed within the cordoned-off site.”

We cut across Kentucky and into Illinois when we crossed the Ohio River where the state dips southward with a bit of a bump and also borders Indiana to the east.

Metropolis, Illinois is not too far NW of the border and we followed along the river to get there. State #9.

The streets near the 15′ Superman statue and the Super Museum were closed to traffic so we parked a couple of blocks away and walked over. We thought about seeing the museum, but when we peaked through the doorway it just looked like a bunch of Superman memorabilia from years past so for $8.00 per person we decided to give it a pass. The advertising said it was a massive collection of Superman memorabilia but John was not a Superman fan we felt it was likely not worth the cost. The store was packed with stuff though and fun to look around. I wanted to find some Superman playing cards to take home, but we didn’t see any.

There was a comi-con convention going on along with the Superman Festival and we saw quite a few people dressed up as different comic or video game characters. There was a large tent by the big Superman statue that was full of people playing Superman Trivia. It was amazing the things they knew about specific episodes of the various TV series or movies or the comics. I can a barely remember what I watched on TV a day later let alone details about shows decades old.

An Adventure Lab (relatively new feature on Geocaching.com) that took us to five different “Superman” locations and the last one gave you coordinates to a cache.

The Daily Planet Globe was sitting in a closed attraction.

We left Metropolis and located some quiet roads to find a few geocaches as we traveled east to cross the Wabash River into Indiana – State #10.

We got double Welcome to Indiana signs today.

There was a geocache at the courthouse in Mt. Vernon. They had several nice looking buildings and a very clean and attractive downtown center so after we found the cache we took a little drive around. Nice place. A few big factories and a port so they have employment opportunities it seems.

The Garden Club plants and cares for quite a few flower beds and boxes.

This buildling is City Hall and it is also a War Memorial. It is written along the top of the columns and above the doors are carved: sailors, soldiers, marines.

We found a couple more geocaches nearby (one in a little ‘free library’ – I love those – and I found two dog stories to read.) From Mt. Vernon it was a simple drive into Evansville for the night. Dinner at the Texas Roadhouse and blogs and bed. See you tomorrow.