Of the 22 days so far on this trip, we've only camped for three nights - every other night we've been staying in hotels in various cities. As I thought might happen, I'm personally a little city'd out now, and ready for some fun in the middle of nowhere. The latter half of this trip is going to involve a lot more camping, so I may go the other way at that point and long for big cities and comfortable hotel beds :) Anyway, for the next three nights we're in the tent, starting with two nights here in Shenandoah National Park in the state of Virginia. Shenandoah is considered one of the most spectacular national parks in the whole country, and cutting right through the park is Skyline Drive, which frankly is the perfect definition of "scenic drive" for me. It's a 109-mile (175km) road that winds its way along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains, themselves part of the larger Appalachian Mountains range.

Skyline Drive has a total of 75 scenic overlooks, such as this one, with awesome views over the park and beyond. Given it's a weekday, we pretty much had the whole road to ourselves.

Our campground for tonight is at about the 60-mile point, so this was our day for the most part: scenic driving and scenic overlooks. Nice! Skyline Drive is particularly popular in autumn when the leaves are changing colors, and over two million people visit the road annually.

We did go for a short hike to see a waterfall which turned out to be a disappointing dribble, but regardless the location was stunning, and completely silent apart from the sound of flowing water in a nearby stream, which I recorded here :)

We started our day where we left off yesterday - hiking through the forest to see stuff.

First up was a short but steep hike near our campground, with the usual greenery, water, deer darting around, and bugs flying in our faces.

And at the end of it was this - the 70-foot (21m) Dark Hollow Falls. Nice enough.

Next up was another short one, but extremely steep and even requiring a "rock scramble" (which is exactly what it sounds like - scrambling up and down rocks, such as these).

And this was the pay-off - a full 360-degree view over the Shenandoah Valley!

360-degree panorama from the top. Not a bad spot for lunch!

Could never get sick of this :)

The rock scramble back down again hehe - good fun!

Kristina and I touched the Appalachian Trail shortly before leaving New York - a national scenic trail that runs 2,200 miles (3,500km) between the states of Georgia and Maine. The trail also runs through Shenandoah, and now we've done a bit more; just 2,198 miles of it left to go ;)

Back in the car we then headed to a different campground for tonight further along Skyline Drive, fed our face, grabbed a few beers and sat back to watch the sunset. Just another day :)

This morning we moved from Skyline Drive onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, which itself is another awesome scenic road that winds its way along the Blue Ridge Mountains, but this one is a whopping 469 miles (755km) long. The road was completed in 1936 to connect Shenandoah National Park down to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which we spent some time in a few years ago.

However, we only spent a few miles on the parkway before taking a detour for some more hiking. We've been doing a bit of that lately.

These are the Crabtree Falls - a set of five falls buried in George Washington National Forest with a total drop of about 1,000 feet (300m). They're only a dribble at this time of year, but you get the idea.

Kristina did her best to pose for a photo, but after a steep one-mile 1,000-foot hike uphill, she was sweating like a waterfall herself hehe.

From there we drove another hour or so to White Sulphur Springs - a small town in West Virginia. There's nothing there of particular interest - it was just a place to crash for the night. Google Maps claimed there were a couple campgrounds in the area, but evidently that's a bit out of date. The first place told us they don't have tent sites and instead pointed us across the street to the other 'campground' which appeared to be nothing but a trailer and house on the verge of collapsing. So we went over there, found a lady living in the trailer, and were told we're welcome to pitch our tent on the side of the road over there and can even use her shower (in the trailer) if we wanted, though it takes a while to warm up apparently hahaha! As kind an offer as it was, we instead opted to keep looking, and ended up here in the middle of nowhere more than an hour away in Lansing, but at a bona fide campground complete with the usual facilities, like tent sites, and showers :)

The nearest spot for dinner (and apparently the most popular based on the 500 cars, trucks, and tractors parked up) is Dirty Ernie's Rib Pit hehe. Small-town America - I love it! ;)

We awoke this morning to find we'd made a friend. This chicken followed us round our campsite all morning as we sorted our crap out, packed up, and prepared to leave hehe.

Then I discovered not only had I somehow lost my underwear from the day before, but I'd somehow misplaced the key fob for our car! The car will only start if the key fob is inside, and it did start which suggested the key fob was somewhere nearby. After 15 minutes of tearing the car to pieces, I eventually found it in the very first place I had previously looked: the front of my backpack but it had buried itself beneath all the other (photography-related) crap I have in there. Then I found my underwear in the showers, where I must have left them the night before. Frankly I'm surprised nobody stole them.

So, with my underwear situation in order, we headed to our first little scenic stop of the day: Glade Creek Grist Mill in Babcock State Park. The park itself is about 4,000 acres in size, and the grist mill here is apparently one of the most photographed sites in the entire state of West Virginia (and now I've added to that statistic).

Built in 1976, the grist mill is a fully operable recreation of one which once ground grain on Glade Creek long before Babcock became a state park. The mill was created by combining parts and pieces from three mills which once dotted the state.

Not too far away, this is where we had lunch today - Hawks Nest State Park overlook, perched high above the New River some 750 feet (230m) below. We've eaten lunch in worse places.

And for good measure, we found another waterfall on the roadside nearby. Good stuff.

Panorama from the overlook. That thing on the right is a hydro-electric dam. From here we drove to Lexington, Kentucky to crash with another one of Kristina's college buddies for the night, before a long drive tomorrow to stay with yet another one for a few days. Hooray for college buddies!

From Lexington, Kentucky where we crashed last night to St. Louis, Missouri where we're crashing for the next few nights, we drove through the states of Indiana, Illinois, and basically a whole lot of nothing today! I shot the above from a remote gas station while Kristina was emptying her bladder (again).

St. Louis' downtown skyline is dominated by this, thing: the Gateway Arch, plonked on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River (the shot on the left was taken from the Illinois side). At 630 feet (192m) tall, the stainless steel-clad Gateway Arch is the world's tallest arch, and the tallest monument in the Western Hemisphere. The arch is a monument to the western expansion of the United States, and has an observation area within the top portion of the arch. However, we've been up plenty of tall things before, so we didn't bother.

St. Louis is home to about 320,000 though the surrounding metropolitan area is home to close to three million. It has a nice little downtown area but it's extremely quiet - especially for a weekday afternoon!

Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals - the city's Major League Baseball franchise. When the Cardinals are playing at home, downtown is apparently anything but quiet.

After a late start to summer, temperatures were sweltering here today and the humidity was energy-sapping! This is one of several fountains scattered around with "No swimming" signs hehe.

With sweat dripping, we continued meandering for a bit until we'd seen enough, and ran for some air conditioning.

We had lunch at Union Station, once the world's largest and busiest train station, but today merely a shadow of its former self. The station first opened in 1894, but as airliners became the preferred mode of long-distance travel and railroad passenger services declined in the 1950s and 1960s, the massive station became obsolete and too expensive to maintain for its original purpose. Fast forward to 1985 after renovations, the station reopened as a hotel, shopping mall, and entertainment complex. It seemed to be pretty quiet in there today, much like everything else.

Today was a bit of a chill-out day before another long day on the road again tomorrow, but we did visit one of the must-see attractions of the city: the Anheuser-Busch Brewery tour hehe. The brewery was first opened in 1852 by a German immigrant (and the German's certainly know about beer), and offers free tours with free beer included. Naturally, it attracts a rather interesting crowd, with IQ scores clearly in the low double digits.

The entire complex is humongous, and for some reason this tower is the second-most photographed thing in St. Louis behind the Gateway Arch, so ahh, here it is.

The brewery produces (and is licensed to produce) a couple dozen different brews, but is most famous as the home of Budweiser.

And here's a shot for you Mum! The company keeps a rotation of its famous Budweiser Clydesdales at its headquarters, historically used to pull wagons carrying beer in the 19th-century days of the company.

The usual production floor stuff we've seen at other breweries, but on a much larger scale.

We escaped it yesterday, but the skies went dark this afternoon, thundered like crazy, rained on us, and then disappeared again. This part of the US is right in the middle of tornado alley, and this is the worst time of year for wild weather (my favourite kind).

If ever there was a TV show that defined addiction and demanded binge-watching, the 2005-2009 series Prison Break is it. If you haven't seen it, start.

Season one of the four-season series was primarily filmed inside the former Joliet Correctional Center in the city of Joliet, near Chicago (where we are now). This wasn't a planned stop until I happened to see a sign for Joliet during the drive today, and remembered it as the filming location of the prison. Kristina is equally obsessed with the show, so here we are :)

The prison was in operation from 1858 to 2002. At one point it had the highest inmate population in the country, which eventually peaked at 1,300 in 1990 with about 500 staff. Due to Budget cuts and the obsolete and dangerous nature of the building, the prison was permanently shut down in 2002. Prison Break aside, the prison has featured in many other movies and TV shows, both before and since its closure.

This wall and this spot right here is where the Prison Break inmates escaped over at the end of season one, from that building (the prison infirmary) in the background (spoiler alert ;)

The prison is completely secured with no public access. Be that as it may, I really wanted to get inside, and it seems at least a few others have too. The chain link fence surrounding the building entrance has been cut open, and while we were here a group of teenagers were making their way inside hahaha!

Not exactly a welcoming sight. The main building is virtually in ruins. Although a local museum is seeking to establish guided tours of the penitentiary, it might be some time before that happens.

The prison yard, very overgrown but still recognisable from the show.

The rooms throughout the main building all resemble this - a complete mess thanks to vandalism. Unfortunately this is about all we got to see. The kids that happened to be in there with us mentioned that until a few days ago it was possible to visit the infirmary and jail cells. However, a bloody large chain and padlock has since been placed round the only point of access, so we were out of luck!