From the president's barber shop to the dunes, corn and steak delirium of Indianapolis, the course of Benji's second day on the road.

We've headed out onto South Illinois street, wobbling our way under the Amtrak tracks towards The Slippery Noodle, hoping it's not too late for some blues.

Almost floored. My steak slices like butter. We three lucky swines.

In important unrelated news: we discover that Hollis used to be a salmon boat captain in Alaska.

Gary and Hollis are almost crying. It's a horseradish grenade in a bowl.

They can barely talk. It's horseradish with a side of shrimp. I'm smugly dissecting my lettuce salad.

I nip outside. More baseball fans walking past from the game aimed towards the bars on Meridian Street.

I'm standing next to a steak casualty – they serve 32oz cuts in here – he's mobbing his brow and pacing in circles. A bad case of meat sweat delirium.

I've plumped for a 6oz filet mignon as part of a $35 menu … don't judge me.

Brett brings the steak knives. He's worked here for 10 years. His favourite customers? John Travolta and Robert Duvall. 

Why's the shrimp cocktail so damn good?

"It's the cocktail sauce, lots of horseradish, it's almost like a sweet wasabi".

I nod knowingly.

Courtney, our waitress, has brought us a round of Sun King Weemac – a dark Scottish-style ale brewed a few blocks from here. Yummy.

We've made it to the restaurant and are huddled around our table, the wall behind us crammed with signed pictures of visitors. 

Our table is framed by an intriguing collection: we've got TV presenter Dick Clarke, film critic Gene Shalit, and a picture of a guy standing next to a freshly-captured Saddam Hussein.

Late into Indy, aimed for the cheapest in a trio of side-by-side Mariott Hotels opposite Victory Field, where the drabs of a local minor league baseball game are filing out of the stadium.

Our unscientific Twitter poll has yielded a clear dinner winner: St Elmo's, home to the "best shrimp cocktail in the world" according to @Z_Everson.

A bold claim, one I'm wholly unqualified to judge – my pseudo-Kosherness means I'm passing this one on to Hollis. I'll report his facial expressions diligently. 

[Editor's note: related to this culinary mystery is chicken fried steak, which the Guardian tackled here.]

So what if the film takes place in Nebraska – Benji has learned from Stephen King that corn is terrifying and full of demonic spirits that possess your friends...

@LiterateIndy and others on Twitter want Benji to pay his respects to the final resting place of Indianapolis-born John Dillinger, the prohibition-era bank robber declared "Public Enemy No 1".

For the complete low down on Dillinger's life and crimes, you can check out this remarkably thorough site, or the FBI's rather less breathless account of his case.

If you're only in it for the highlights, courtesy the former of those two:

• Dillinger escaped prison with a "using a gun which had been carved out of wood [to take] two of his keepers hostage. After locking up the warden … he commandeered two machine guns. After freeing a fellow inmate, he ultimately made his way out a side door … to make his getaway in the sheriff's V-8 Ford."

• His gang included an "underworld character Lester Gillis, better known as Baby Face Nelson, known for his reputation as a trigger-happy killer."

• Trying to evade the law, Dillinger had plastic surgery done and tried to remove his fingerprints. "Some friends on seeing John later, thought he looked like he had the mumps."

• After being betrayed by a "woman in red" – an immigrant who knew Dillinger's girlfriend and was eager to stay in the country – FBI agents killed Dillinger in a shootout outside a movie theater.

Finally, @CrownHillTom handily provides a map to his final resting place.

Reluctantly, we've left Bill and Larry at the truck stop and its onwards to Indy as the sun sets. We'll arrive around dinner time - there's been two clear forerunners among your tips: Shapiro's Deli and St Elmo's Steakhouse. Which is best?'

For after, The Slippery Noodle Inn – the oldest blues bar in the state. Any advice?

CD update: we're seven tracks into Foreigner's "Acoustique" album. It's masterful. Hollis, a die-hard metal fan, is pleasantly surprised. 

We decided to inspect the corn. It's huge … 10ft tall at least, and it goes on forever.

Hollis starts talking about the Children of the Corn movie. I run back to the car, you know, just to check we locked it.

We've scored some excellent stuff in the station shop: 

• "Acoustique" album by Foreigner

• Indiana fridge magnet: "What happens here stays here … but nothing ever really happens here"

• A foot and a half of smoke stack

• Cheese and sausage in gastronomic harmony

• Blue raspberry Twizzlers

We head inside to the 24-hour all-you-can-eat Iron Skillet diner, and saddle up next to Bill, a trucker from Kansas.

"When I was growing up, if you wore white socks you got you ass kicked."

I can't remember why he told us that. He's come from Georgia this morning. Larry, across the bar, has come from Milwaukee, and started at 4am this morning. He's spending the night here.

Our Englishness is a talking point. "I once lived next to an English lady," Larry says, "she had 10 children."

True story: Larry and Bill both listen to the BBC World Service in their trucks. They're very nice men … they wish us well and safe travels

1. We found a truck stop: rows and rows of the things. Big hulking bruisers, noisy as – the engines are all running, pumping the air conditioning as drivers sleep in the cabs.

Benji just missed Valparaiso's annual popcorn festival, and there was a 'Fiddlefest' nearby just months ago. The midwest takes its fairs seriously, and Indiana is no different. A quick perusal of the state's 2013 guide – fronted by a goateed man joyously galumphing astride a horse, sword in hand – reveals over 475 planned events.

Just earlier this year, Indiana hosted the Shipshewana Pajama Sale, the Jasper Strassen Fest, the Fiber Fest & Spin-In, the Makarusa Maple Syrup Festival, the Mansfield Village Mushroom Festival and Car Show, the Sassafrass Tea Festival & Civil War Living History, the Indiana Gourd Society State Gourd Show, the Lore of the Laughery, and the St Joe Pickle Festival. 

There isn't nearly enough time to visit one, so we can let David Foster Wallace explain the festival fanaticism to us in his classic Harper's piece about a midwestern state fair:

Here you're pretty much away all the time. The land is big here – board-game flat, horizons in every direction. See how much farther apart the homes are, how broad the yards: compare with New York or Boston or Philly. Here a seat to yourself on all public transport, parks the size of airports, rush hour a three-beat pause at a stop sign. And the farms themselves are huge, silent, vacant: you can't see your neighbor. Thus the urge physically to commune, melt, become part of a crowd. To see something besides land and grass and corn and cable TV and your wife's face. Hence the sacredness out here of spectacle, public event: high-school football, Little League, parades, bingo, market day, fair. All very big deals, very deep down. … The faces in the sea of faces are like the faces of children released from their rooms … The real spectacle that draws us here is us.

Corn fields, discount tobacco stores, giant adverts on the sides of lorries parked in lay-bys, corn fields, car showrooms, local mayoral candidate adverts, more corn fields. We're truly on the road now, making progress, roughly 40 miles north of Lafayette.

We're hoping for a few stops between here and Indy. Ideally a service station where we can play "CD roulette" – dip your hand in the discount CD bucket and buy the first one you touch. Also I want a T-shirt with an animal on it.

While Gary works …

Benji sleeps.

Reader picks (thanks, CAD777!), the requisite, requested Cougar, and Modest Mouse. (They were once considered indie, right?)

CAD777, providing some great recommendations below the line, has suggested a town that's a bit too far to make but still very fun to say: Shipshewana.

Home to a large Amish community and in Shipse you can browse all types of handmade goods and also sample some delicious food. They also host a large flea market and livestock sale which was my favorite thing to do while visiting my grandparents.

The Guardian's own Indiana native, Katie Rogers, just told me that Shipshewana's Amish community apparently has all kinds of tricks for watching TV, mostly involving fast food. She left the office, however, before explaining what this means exactly, or what programmes the Amish like to watch.

Our very chirpy waitress Taylor looks like she's ready to go to church in a plain, tidy white dress. A closer look: the dress has a number of white skull and crossbones stitched into it. 

The turkey clubs are good. Their stand-out feature: tangy sweet "bread and butter" pickles. We cause a minor furore by asking for a mixed fruit cobbler we see on an adjacent table – it's an exclusive feature of the senior (elderly) menu. The lead waitress is unsure, but it gets authorised.

The bathrooms have fake ostrich skin walls.

The "Blue Yonder" Lounge is shaped like an airplane and is awesome.

Another waiter with a very sensible side parting takes our bill and bids us farewell.

"Bye guys, don't do anything I wouldn't do" he laughs nervously. 

The Strongbow's thing is turkey. I ask ask our waitress Taylor, why is this?

"Because no one else around here does turkey."

I order a turkey guacamole club, which turns out to be absolutely nothing like the discouraging squares of bread first served us. It is a club proper.

Inside, we're one of three parties, and have lowered the average age by about 40 years. 

We're on outskirts of Valparaiso, on one of those quintessentially American strips of road flanked on either side with a symmetrical loop of outlets. All the usual suspects are here: Wendy's, Staples, Walmart, Taco Bell, yadda, yadda. 

And then there's the Strongbow Inn, an unremarkable prefab building with the Stars and Stripes billowing from a stump in the carpark.

Cubsml34 has brought some of that anarchic Illinois spirit across the border, back again, and below the line:

You can participate in a great Illinois tradition and buy gobs of fireworks in Indiana, bring them back into Illinois where they are illegal, and really stick it to the man by shooting them off and watching your paycheck explode right in front of you!

We've only seen a tiny fraction of the park, which apparently has whole forests and marshlands, but it's already time to get back on the road.

We're off to Valparaiso to refuel at the Strongbow Inn, on NWIresident's advice. Any tips there or for the road ahead?

If I don't get a third nipple out of this...

The water was fringed with families, sheltering under umbrellas in the heat, occasionally wading out into the shallow water towards a sand bank a few hundred yards out. Everyone seemed at peace with the steel mill to the left, and the nuclear plant to the right. I joined them.

A trio of trees defying logic and growing on sand dunes.

We've arrived at the dunes – 25 miles of wild beaches on Lake Michigan's southern shore. At their eastern edge you can see the silhouettes of a swathe of vast steel mills; out to sea you can just about make out a couple of giant freighters. An oasis flanked by industry. I'm off for a swim. 

But so far no stands, just highway and the odd occasional tower.

We've entered the "rust belt". Miles of roads flanked by decades-old industrial hulks, pylons and train tracks. We've been keeping pace with a mile-long freight train for about 10 minutes now. I can't remember seeing its front or back.

And they're off - to milk something.

And as they're hitting the road for the first time proper, here's the first proper road trip playlist - bye bye Chicago/Illinois, hello Indiana.

And remember - we do take requests. We'll even cue them up nicely for you in a playlist. So do send in your tuneage. (Are you listening Indiana?)

You know what to do: below in the comments, @GuardianTravel, #TwiTrips.

Like all great unplanned trips, we're willing to change directions regularly. Before the dairy farm, we're heading around the southern shores of Lake Michigan towards the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, due partly to a groundswell in the comments section, and the fact that it includes the words "dunes" and "lakeshore" in it. Perfect.

After a fine finale in Chicago - huge thanks again to @megaheid for the tip - we're on the road, aimed for the I65 into Indiana. We've picked up essential provisions - beef jerky, Twizzlers and a Hershey's bar. We've covered about 10 blocks, and have already finished the jerky.

We're aimed for the Fair Oaks Dairy Farm thanks to @siobhanoc1's tip. I'm gonna milk something and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

The team has made it to the Hyde Park Hair Salon...and that famous chair.

We're indebted to @stephani - um, we think - for these Indiana tips. We can't wait.

stephani

27 August 2013 5:51pm

Sadly, Indiana is a drive-through state. I just came off a long 12-hour road trip from Washington, DC to Chicago. However, there are a few things I could recommend.

Indiana Dunes. They aren't as impressive as the dunes in West Michigan, but they are worth a look. The State Park is near Michigan City, not far from Gary.

Downtown Gary is an aging rustbelt city, full of vacant buildings, and worth seeing if you are into that sort of thing (sort of a mini Detroit). Also the Gary Works (steel mills) is just off the Chicago Skyway, kind of impressive in their own right.

Columbus, Indiana is worth a stop on your way from Indianapolis to Louisville. The city has a surprising collection of noteworthy buildings designed by noted architects like Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, among others. I enjoyed my afternoon there.

Parke County, Indiana is the covered bridge capital of world (http://www.coveredbridges.com). It's downstate, near Purdue University. I camped near there, years ago.

Indiana Dunes now has two three yays, as @NWIresident has tipped it under the line, and @woyce tipped it yesterday on Twitter - only she was a bit more fulsome in her praise:

I've always loved the Century of Progress homes at the Indiana Dunes & Conner Prairie, just NE of Indy.

Wiki says: "The Century of Progress Architectural District, a part of the eastern unit of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, is an historic district on Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores, Porter County, Indiana. The district comprises five buildings, all from the Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition during the 1933 Century of Progress World's Fair which took place in Chicago."

So, that's good. Eh?

Also Columbus, and Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, also gets a second nod, following a tip yesterday on Twitter from @stpaulspot.

Hoosiers, we're hearing you.

A couple of radio stations suggestions coming in via Twitter.

Would be great to hear about Indiana stations, too. Would save us living with this earworm for the duration of the drive. 

Doh!

If there's one thing Barack Obama is unwilling to compromise, it's the quality of his do. The President has been a patron of the same Chicago barbershop, the Hyde Park Hair Salon, for over 20 years, even flying his favourite barber, Zariff, over to Washington to keep him trim. The neighbourhood barbershop, which was founded in 1927, has a solid history of celebrity clientele including Muhammad Ali, Spike Lee and Chicago's first African-American mayor Harold Washington - but they haven't let it go to their heads. President or not, the classic “Home of the Obama Cut” will only set you back $21.

We've picked up our car ... the road part of this trip begins.

Gary is at the wheel, and doing admirably. Gary belly update: unsettled. We're aimed for Obama's favoured barber shop in Hyde Park before hitting the big roads to Indiana. Gonna see what they can do with my Jewfro.

Two things we need from you, dear readers: a name for the car - something suitable for the trip. Indy the Jeep? Dolly? Elvis?

Also: a radio station please, Chicago and/or Indiana. Thanks in advance.

Come on good people of Indiana - Hoosiers, if we may be so bold to refer to you by your nickname - the reputation of your honourable state is being besmirched. "Nothing to see", 'driveby state',"cornfields" blah blah.

But we are coming to you and we need to hear from you. We need you to shout as loud as you can: "We are here! We are here! We are here!" in a "Guardian hears a Hoosier" sort of way.

Send us things to see and do - no matter how small - and prove all the naysayers wrong!

Usual places: @BenjiLanyado, #TwiTrips, @GuardianTravel, GuardianWitness, or in the comments below.

A mound of omelette, needlessly - but wonderfully - accompanied by raisin toast and maple syrup, and never-ending coffee.

Best of all, our waitress Beverly gave each of us a whopping great cuddle as we left. Her sister lives in Indiana, she says. "There's nothing there. Have fun skipping through the cornfields."

We're in Lou Mitchell's, a classic Chicago diner and campaign trail pit stop. [Editor's note: Lou's, established 1923, is close to Union Station and the beginning of Route 66 and was frequented by many travellers before their journey along the road, earning it the nickname "the first stop on the Mother Road."]

I love these places. I've been called "darling" twice in the last five minutes. 1980s leather booths, seats at the bar, constant movement and steaming coffee.

We're chatting to Jackson, a UIC maths student who comes here once a week. We ask him for tips between here and Indiana. "There's nothing in Indiana," he says. Encouraging.

We're en route to Lou Mitchell's, a local staple recommended by @GreatAuntUK, a Brit living in Chicago. We're having our first lunatic taxi experience. The driver took us eight blocks the wrong way, almost ran down a few cyclists, tried to start the meter on $9, kept pressing a button that added a dollar to the fare every few minutes. Then we almost stole his shoes. Long story. We called each other assholes and went our separate ways.

The Huffington Post has compiled a list of what not to do in Chicago, written by a Windy City resident. How did our Benji fare?

Well, there's good news and bad news.

• Top marks to him – and mainly to you, readers, who pointed him the right direction – for taking the architectural boat tour. "If anything is a must-do in Chicago, this is it," they say. Well consider that must-do, done.

• "Do not wait in line to go up the Willis [formerly Sears] Tower," they say, as the queues are too long. Benji worked this out for himself (read: photographer Hollis told him) and he headed to the John Hancock Tower, where he enjoyed astonishing views for the price of a coffee. More great views were had later on the roof of the J Parker bar. So far: winning.

• "Do not confine yourself to downtown." Ticked that box. As Benji also got out to North Avenue beach.

• The quickest way to stamp tourist on your forehead is, they say, to ask for ketchup on your hotdog. Does that apply to monstrously large Slayer burgers, too? We don't think Benji committed any ketchup-based sins there, but he has already offended the whole of the city with his views on deep-dish pizza, so let's move on ...

• And the final piece of advice: do not be afraid to ask questions. Well, we don't have to worry about Benji being too shy. He's already had on-the-spot tips from Callie, the J Parker waitress from Indiana, and talked a passerby called Mike into giving him an impromptu tour of Lincoln Park.

In sum, good job, Benji. You're practically a local now.