Doing the coast to coast trip, with dad riding shotgun again...  Ideas for places to eat, stop, visit, etc. would be greatly appreciated.  Itinerary is loosely pegged below -

• Sat., June 30: Durham, NC to Gatlinburg, TN with lunch in Asheville
• Sun., July 1: Lexington, KY
• Mon., July 2: Detroit, MI with stops at Buffalo Trace and Maker's Mark (Doing the "dip your bottle in wax" tour)  Staying with family in MI
• Wed., July 4: Fenton, MI.  Staying with Family
• Fri., July 6: Duluth, MN via the UP
• Sat., July 7: Williston, ND
• Sun., July 8: Kalispell, MT via Glacier National
• Monday., July 9: Seattle, WA

End of the trip is pretty flexible, and technically I can take 12 days with my relo and still have hotels covered (within reason), given I'm staying with family for 4.  Considering stopping in Yakima, but it's only 2.5 hrs from Seattle, so I can probably do that any time.  Tossing around the idea of 2 nights in Kalispell to spend an entire day at Glacier before the park melts 

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.  Anything including trains (especially steam locomotives) gets bonus points, as my dad is a train historian/artist/model railroader, as Stemor and Shaferguy can attest to.  I'm ok with 30-60 mile detours, depending on what we're headed for, especially if it's food or wine related.  Don't have to eat at 5 star places, either... we had just as much fun at the bbq place in Memphis (with wooden floors) and hanging out at the Big Texan in Amarillo and watching some guy force feed himself a 6 pound steak as we did in Vegas eating bone-in ribeyes at Delmonico.

Thanks in advance!

Andrew,

Excellent French restaurant in Knoxville called the Orangery. You can BYO for a cork fee of ~$10.