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