It had been a very ugly night.

It had been a night of swirling emotion in the Boston bar where I watched the Bruins achieve one of the greatest feats in sports history – collapsing in a best-of-seven series after winning the first three games. They had added insult to injury by starting the game up 3-0, and losing 4-3, giving every bored sportswriter in America the opportunity to use words like “poetic” and “microcosm”, an opportunity they all made the most of.

I had spent that night in a bar surrounded by a mixture of Bostonians. The casual fans around a table had obviously just gotten off from work and were ready to lightly enjoy a Bruins victory, or shrug and temporarily care about a loss. The less casual fan two stools down, meanwhile, was going through that delightful ballet that many fans would scoff at in others, and not notice in themselves. Before the game, he had written them off mid-season; by the time the Bruins were up 3-0, he had never doubted them for a minute; and then, when they delivered that astonishing collapse, he had written them off mid-season again.

An ugly night, but the sun rose the next morning all the same on that beautiful, distinct American city. And at 5:30 AM, I was on the streets, ready to capture something of it. And I had the place mostly to myself.

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There is something very enticing about the solo road trip. You can go wherever you like, spend as much or as little time at any destination, park or museum without worrying about ruining someone else’s good time, and you have free rein to pursue personal hobbies, such as photography. But for some road trips, having a companion along can mean a lot more than just someone to talk to while you log those miles in the car.

For example, if you plan on driving a route from Minneapolis to Montana and back (along two different routes), you are going to pass a whole lot of “world’s largest” things. And having someone in the picture to provide some scale can make all the difference. Don’t believe me? Take a gander (get it?) at the world’s largest scrap metal statue (North Dakota), below. How big is this thing? Click ‘Continue’ to find out.

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So it was bound to happen. With the amount of driving I do around this country, sooner or later I was bound to pass through the town that invented the Sock Monkey. After all, it must have been invented somewhere, right? There must be a museum telling you the complete details of its history and offering hundreds of examples in all shapes and sizes, somewhere out there in the great American landscape. Right?

Enter Rockford, Illinois.

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