Travel Day 2

Today we departed from Wentzville, MO and headed west toward Nebraska. We ran into a couple of snags along our route. We had seen news footage of the Midwest floods, but had no idea that it was so serious still. The Missouri River had flooded several areas along Interstate 29 and we were able to see several farms completely destroyed by the waters. We had to detour around I-29 because the flood waters had washed out the interstate and several of the roads that we needed to take. A state trooper we talked to said the floods waters would be there for at least 3 more months. We ended up traveling through a good bit of Iowa and saw more corn than we could possibly imagine existed.

We finally made it around the flood waters and got to Kearney, NE where we stopped at the Cabela’s store. It’s similar to Bass Pro Shops but better and a little less expensive.

We had a nice dinner at Applebee’s and hunkered down at the Motel 6 for the evening. It’s pretty hot in Nebraska. It was 100 degrees a1 8:00pm, which was pretty surprising to us.

Tomorrow we head for Wyoming and our last big travel day before Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

Andy & Kate

June 29--Away We Go!

Today began our epic journey west. We have talked about it as a family since December. And Kate’s parents have been working around the clock to get ready to go for the last 2 week’s. We pulled out of Midland, NC around 8:15am and headed west. We traveled down I-40 through the NC mountains and stopped for lunch at a rest stop just before the TN border. We have come to the conclusion after our 2 trips that NC has the nicest rest stops in the country. There is an especially nice one just before the TN border. It is very lush with picnic tables under shade trees and rhododendrons blooming in the background. I highly recommend it.

We drove through TN to Nashville then headed northwest through Kentucky and Illinois. Jim and Steph had a pretty good time seeing all the huge farms in this part of the country. It is pretty amazing to see these massive farms. A lot of them had flood damage, and it was interesting to see the result of all the floods we watched on the news.

As we were crossing the border of Kentucky into Illinois, we passed went through Metropolis, IL which holds its claim to fame as the home of Superman. We would have stopped to see him but I think he was out saving the planet from Lex Luthor again.

After a nice Cracker Barrel dinner (you can always count on Cracker Barrel) we pushed on a little further than we had planned on and ended up at a Motel 6 in Wentzville, MO on the other side of St. Louis. We had to sit through a good bit of traffic in St. Louis. But we all agreed better to encounter a little traffic in the evening after a good day of travel, as oppose to starting off the morning with road construction and rush hour traffic. We snapped this photo that seemed like the understatement of the evening.

Andy & Kate

Here We Go Again...Again

The time of year is upon us again. That's right...time for Andy & Kate to take a ridiculously long trip across the United States. This year we are headed back to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks. After that, we are headed out to Washington State to visit Olympic National Park, then coming back home through Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. We're very excited!

This year's trip is a little different in that we have some extra passengers. Kate's parents, Jim and Stephanie, have caught the travel bug as well and are piling in with us, or we are piling in with them since we're driving their Suburban, and we're headed out West together. Kate's sister and brother-in-law, Megan and Trey, will be flying out to Washington to meet us at Olympic so it will be an exciting family vacation.

We leave this morning and head towards Illinois for our first stop. We'll try to get as many pictures up as we can on Facebook this year so if you need to friend Kate or me just shout! We should be in Yellowstone Saturday so stay tuned!

Andy & Kate