Victorian bed and breakfast in Fairfield, Ill.
It was a Victorian home built in 1895 that led us to Fairfield, Illinois, on our last stop on the 26-day driving odyssey from Chattanooga to the Oregon coast.
There are plenty of Airbnbs and VRBOs around, but not so many bed and breakfasts any more, it seems. However, Kathleen Taylor has carried on with the home lodging business with the more personal touch. She has done so though her husband died in 2017 and her daughter and son-in-law are in far-away LA. The daughter, she said, works in the movie business and came up with the idea for the popular Minions.
The attractive three-story home needs some TLC on the outside, and the modern siding takes away some of the charm. But inside it must look much like when it was built - inner transoms, pocket doors and all. There are old paintings and portraits, bright dishware, figurines, collectibles and all sorts of novelties from days gone by crowded inside the house.
The original plan was for the family to operate an antique business from the big house. That venture was halted when there was an incident with a collapsed step out front. Then, with all the antiques in place, it was decided to go the bed and breakfast route.
Asked for a dinner choice, Kathleen mentoned Five Brothers as a place "where you can order off a menu." We turned right to go there, and the highlight of the meal was our engaging server - on her first night on the job after hurrying over from high school classes. She grinned with each tip received, saying it was well needed "to put some gas in my car." We found out later that we might have done better turning left and going to the old part of town. But, from Katherine's recommendation, it seems that might not have yielded a order off the menu restaurant. She said the town was in the doldrums without a major industry.
For breakfast there was a full spread on an eight-person table with a white tablecloth. Min exhorted Zef not to spill any apple butter on the fine linen, and he managed not to. We were joined by a talkative male guest, and that was right down Zef's alley.
Then it was off to Chattanooga, and by this time most of the group was anxious to push off - with no interesting stops allowed - except for a Cheddar's.
Around Monteagle we noticed some dark clouds mingling with the bright and cheery cumulus ones, then there were a couple of intermittent downpours. It was almost the first rain we had seen since leaving Chattanooga - except for the Cheyenne deluge. That Monteagle rain would have been a godsend in many of the sparsely populated, arid lands we had passed. There they get along with man-made lakes and irrigation, where it is available.
We finally pulled into scenic Chattanooga, and it was a welcome sight.
We had traveled 7,006 miles and seen some amazing landscapes, towns and parks - including the Oregon coast with its whales, seals and sea lions (we saw all of those). There was also Shoshone Falls, Yellowstone, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Needles Highway, Wall Drug, the Spokane and Sioux Falls downtown waterfalls and much more.
We had been together with Zef and Min almost non-stop for weeks on end and somehow never came to blows.
The beautiful red Buick Envision did great and the only new scratches are from suitcases banging in and out.
You should try our same route (find someone who plays Hand and Foot or Bridge or better still Five Crowns). The trip is spaced out so the driving is limited to about five to six hours each day. And there is a week in one location on the Oregon coast - maybe Newport or Depoe Bay. There's two days at one spot to enjoy Yellowstone and two more for the interesting section around Mount Rushmore.
It's good to be back in Chattanooga.
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Breakfast spread after a night in a three-story mansion