15th September - We headed back into Chicago to see the last few things we wanted to see here before moving on. We went to see the centrepiece of Grant Park, the Buckingham Fountain with its 1.5 million gallon water capacity, but it was under renovation so we could not see it gush on the hour or light up to music at night. Last thing on the list was a boat cruise along the Chicago River and onto Lake Michigan. We thought a sightseeing event would be nice to finish off what has been a fabulous time in Chicago. Unfortunately, thwarted again.The Great Fall Flood of 2008 (caused by the tail end of Hurricane Ike) has meant that all the water locks to the river have had to be closed to prevent further flooding in the city. The knock-on of that being that the boats were locked into specific sections of the river and so were not offering their normal sightseeing cruises. Kirsty went for a 'Wreck' (a turkey, beef, ham and salami sandwich from the famous Potbelly Sandwich Works) and, of course, a chocolate malt. With everything done that we were able to we said a sad farewell to Chicago, which is a wonderful and friendly place, and are now plotting our next stop.It should be noted that the people of Chicago are some of the friendliest Americans we have come across.People have missed their tube on the subway to come and help us get to where we wanted to be, even though we have never asked for it.It seems looking confused at a map of Chicago or the subway system is enough to stop the people of Chicago in their tracks and offer to help you out, which has been so lovely for us.

16th - We have decided to head back to Ohio to finish off doing all the things we wanted to before we had to rush to Chicago to see The Fratellis.It is a long way back there, but we have plenty to see and we really don't mind the 6 hour journey back to our next stop, Columbus (although due to the road closures because of flooding the journey actually took 8 hours).We stopped in Little Italy in Chicago on our way out of the city for a last meal there and, feeling sick as dogs after eating way too much pizza and tiramisu, we started our long drive back to Ohio.We are glad to see that the weather is once again hot and sunny, but really feel sorry for the many people of Chicago who are having to deal with the terrible flooding caused by the two days of solid rain we had from Hurricane Ike.Although roads are starting to re-open, basements and the ground floors of many houses still remain under water and quite a few people in the area close to where we were staying died after going down in to their basements to try to start bailing the water out.It seems they forgot that the water was above the height of electrical plugs which meant that the water was electrified, and were killed by electrocution.I imagine it's just something you wouldn't think about when your basement is full of water.Other than those people, deaths due to the flooding in the area have just been 3, all due to drowning.We are just lucky that the only effects we felt were a massive delay getting around closed roads to our hotel every night.We can now tell we are back in the strong bible belt as we have seen numerous religious billboards, our favourites being "Hell's real, Jesus is real" and "Heaven or Hell - you have a choice", and lots of religious stickers covering every inch of local cars.You also see lots of mega churches here dotted along the way and they are huge and can take thousands of people - religion is a big business here.

17th - We took a drive to the German Village in Columbus, Ohio to see the quaint little area that was almost entirely German until prejudice broke out around WWI. After a period of German book burning and closing down the German breweries during prohibition, the German Village was ready to be demolished for city improvements and interstate construction, but locals rallied to regenerate the village and now it's not particularly German looking apart from the shops and street names (despite being entirely unaltered from the original buildings) but very pretty, quiet and cobblestoned. After a stop at the main park and a German fudge shop we continued on to see the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park which was a centrefor the prehistoric Hopewell people who left behind burial mounds (which now look like grassy humps!) from around 200 BC to AD 600.We weren't entirely impressed by the Park and so we carried on to Cincinnati, Ohio (via a Red Lobster restaurant). As it's Kirsty's birthday tomorrow we looked round for things for her to do then. There's no basketball team here so she decided on going to see the baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds. We went to the stadium to buy the tickets for tomorrow and found that tonight's game was a 'bark in the park' event where people can bring their dogs to the match! One guy had turned up at the stadium to find he could bring his dog, then gone home to collect his dog, only to find that he needed a ticket for his dog, not just one for himself! He was offering his ticket to people for free because the game had started and couldn't get a second ticket, but only one ticket wouldn't have done us much good so we had to let it go. After getting some great tickets near to the dugout for tomorrow nights game, we took a look at the Roebling Suspension Bridge over the River Ohio that separates the states of Ohio and Kentucky. This bridge was Roebling's practice before the Brooklyn Bridge and they are very similar in style, but the Brooklyn Bridge just pips this one because it's much bigger and leads to Grimaldi's pizza place (wow I miss that pizza). Then we crashed in a nice central hotel so that Kirsty wouldn't have to spend her birthday in a flea bitten Days Inn or Super 8.

18th - Kirsty's 31st birthday and a lovely relaxing day. We got up very late (even for us) and Kirsty spent the morning eating chocolate for breakfast and opening cards from her family (including a home made one from me).She also really had her birthday made extra happy as her friend Emma called to wish her a happy birthday and to tell her that she and her husband Jim (we went to their wedding 18 months ago in Lapland) are going to have a baby in early February - congratulations to you both xWe went out and stumbled upon a TK Maxx (called TJ Maxx here) which was really lucky because we've not had a laundry in any of our hotels since we left New York and I'm running out of pants! After buying some unmentionables and a pair of headphones (sorry Kariss they are exactly the same ones as you have but they were on sale at $20.00!) we spent an hour in Starbucks discussing our future employment possibilities and then sat in Fountain Square below the beautiful 'Spirit of the Waters' fountain to discuss them further. Kirsty wanted an Indian meal for her birthday so we had a really nice curry and made our way to the Great American Ballpark to watch the Cincinnati Reds get narrowly beaten by the St Louis Cardinals 5-4. The game was fun and we were really close to the pitch which allowed Kirsty to catch a T-shirt that was thrown into the crowd at half time. She also decided to have two lots of candy floss (cotton candy) rather than her normal one, as this was a birthday!The Reds were not a patch of a team in comparison with the Chicago White Sox and the crowd here were a lot more subdued, but we enjoyed it all the same.Before crashing, we made time to go to the hotel pool and Jacuzzi and decided to leave exploring Cincinnati to tomorrow. The Lonely Planet guide says Cincinnati is pretty and genteel but a bit backward and racist. We found this was only half right. It is pretty and genteel but there is a healthy racial mix with no obvious tensions and it has a big city feel (and skyline) with about a tenth the people of a normal city. This is the city that Jerry Springer was the mayor of and Mark Twain said of it that he wanted to be here when the world comes to an end because the city is always 20 years behind the times. We like it and are looking forward to seeing the Oktoberfest celebrations starting tomorrow - I'm still working on getting us to stay for the weekend so I can fully participate in the Oktoberfest proper.

19th - We got up and headed straight for Carew Tower near our hotel, which is an art deco style tower with a 49th floor open air observation deck.After a look at the city from above (and Kentucky across the water) we went back to Fountain Square to see the annual Running of the Weiner race.Unbelievably this is a race in which daschhunds are dressed in costumes so they resemble hot dogs (complete with mustard) and then raced down a 100ft track!We were amazed to see that around 40 dashunds had been entered and it was incredible to see them all being fitted into their costumes by their owners.This race is meant to be a bit of fun to mark the start of Oktoberfest, but you can tell that a few of the owners take this very seriously and have been in training with their dogs for far too long!After watching the heats (conducted by a local radio celebrity wearing a hat shaped like a chicken!) we got to watch the finals and see the crowning of the Running of the Weiner Champion 2008.We sadly left the hot dogs with legs and took a walk down by the riverside and were intending to go to an area on a steep hill called Mount Adams, but the weather was incredibly hot and Ralph was definitely flagging, so we instead picked up the car and drove across the border to the state of Kentucky and an area called Covington which also had an old German street, it being mainly occupied by Germans at one time, but it was fairly disappointing so we went to Newport in Kentucky to stop for an hour at a German bierkeller where Ralph enjoyed a stein or two of lager before we drove back over the bridge to Ohio and up to Mount Adams which had been billed as an equivalent to Montmartre in Paris, and unfortunately was nowhere near as beautiful.We therefore drove an hour to Dayton, Ohio, ready for our visit to the National Museum of the US Air Force tomorrow.

20th - We got up and drove the short distance to the Air Force Museum.We were really surprised when we arrived as the car park was full and they were directing people to park on the grass.We have visited a couple of these museums before and you only get a handful of people looking around, even on a weekend.It turns out there was a marathon being held at the Air Force base which, luckily for us, was just finishing, and hundreds of people were walking back to their cars with their medals and race numbers.Our visit to the museum only took a short while as Ralph wasn't interested in large sections of it, such as early flight, World War I and II planes, as we have seen a much better collection at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC last November.Instead we just had a look around the Cold War collection and, of course, the Space section, where Ralph was able to get a photo of the original Apollo 15 capsule, we reckon he only has one left to get now, thank goodness!! We left the museum and started our drive to Springfield, Illinois, which is a 6 hour drive and so will take up the rest of our day.The two things we noticed whilst driving through rural Illinois is that they are really into guns here (we have seen signs all throughout our journey explaining how great guns are "Guns are fun!") and they are also really into home grown produce ("Corn from Illinois, NOT the Middle East").We have passed into a new time zone (Central Time) and so are 6 hours behind the UK again, and for anyone on the edge of their seats with worry, we managed to finally find a hotel with a laundry today, and so Ralph has clean pants again!

21st - After catching up with Ralph's parents on the webcam we went into Springfield to get a tour of Abraham Lincoln's home.The tour was pretty short but you got to see the majority of the rooms and the National Park Service have once again done a fantastic job of preserving it and trying to exactly reproduce items which no longer exist such as matching wallpaper to the original which would have been in certain rooms of the house etc.The whole area where Abraham Lincoln's house is situated has been bought by the Park Service and restored to how it was at the time Lincoln and his family lived there, so house by house is a perfect reproduction, the roads are not open to cars and the entire area is like stepping back a hundred or so years, and is exceptionally peaceful and pretty.Saying that, to say that Springfield is the capital of Illinois, it was like a complete ghost town.Both Ralph and I commented that it was like waking up as the only survivors of something that has wiped out the population of the Earth, total empty streets, free of cars, people, anything at all.Erie!We took a (very quiet!) walk around to see the State Capitol, as it is not open to visitors until Tuesday and we will have moved on by then.We then took a drive to the Museum of Funeral Customs and decided to give it a go.It's only a small place but they really pack the information in, covering embalming, different funeral customs depending on which country you live in and which religion you are part of and a section on Lincoln's funeral (the Museum is situated outside the cemetery where Lincoln's tomb is held).We then had a look at Lincoln's tomb, which is impressive to look at but we were unable to go inside as it is closed on Sunday's, and contains Lincoln and his wife and children.We then made our way back to the hotel for an early finish to the day as we have to update the blog, and that usually takes about 3 hours!!