Yesterday, as I was reading on my Kindle, The Nugget asked, "Why do you have that [referring to the Kindle] all the time?"  

I shrugged and said, "I love to read."

She made a face.  "I don't," she said, as she attempted a head-stand on the porch floor.

I just finished Bob Woodward's new book, Rage.  A few days ago, I finished Michael Cohen's book - can't remember the title.  Having read several books about Trump, nothing in either book surprised me.

Tired of the subject (in more ways than one), I looked for something new to read last night.  I downloaded three books and started Deep South by Paul Theroux.  I'm loving this one, so far.  It reminds me of all the trips The Husband and I have made, towing a camper behind us.

When we travel, we deliberately avoid large towns and interstate highways, partly because it is a pain to drive through unfamiliar cities when pulling a camper.  (One doesn't abruptly change lanes or turn around after missing an exit when there's a 30-foot extension on the vehicle.)  Instead, as Theroux is describing in this book, we travel the back roads.  

One time, on a tiny back road in Alabama, our telephone map app advised us to get out and walk the rest of the way.

We take the less-beaten paths even when we are not towing a camper.  We have a rule against eating at chain restaurants, which has led to some of our most interesting experiences.  Last year, while on a business trip to Gatlinburg, we stopped in a little town - can't recall the name of the place off-hand, but it was east of Middle Tennessee - for lunch.  It was Wednesday, and the few shops and restaurants that we passed were closed up tight, reminding me of my childhood, when our county seat town used to close on Wednesdays and Sundays.  We finally spotted a little shop with a cute-sounding name - something like "Dumplin's" - that looked like a gift shop but had a chalkboard sign outside announcing lunch.  By this time, it was late for lunch, but we gave it a try.

It was a tiny shop, with shelves loaded with herbal oils and candles and cookbooks, and two little bistro tables in the front corner.  There was a piano on one wall.  The shop owners, a retirement-age couple, were sitting at one of the tables, having their own meal.  When we asked if we were too late for lunch, they happily stopped eating and fried us some hamburgers on the grill in the back of the store.  When the husband brought our foot, he sat down at the next table and asked, "Where are y'all from?"  The real question, though, was where was HE from, for his accent gave him away; he was not a native Tennessean.  It turned out that he had done some roaming in his life and had settled in Nashville at some point, hoping to make it big in the music business.  He'd done some drumming and stage-hand work at the Grand Ole Opry for a while.  His wife had run a catering business.  After a few years of hustling, they longed for a more quiet life and moved to this little town.  It still surprised him that people called him by name in the grocery store.

We haven't had a road trip since covid appeared.  Theroux's book has given me the itch to hit the road.