We left home at exactly 8:02 a.m. on this 54 degree (brr!) morning, after loading up our van with SO much stuff that it looks like we are MOVING to Texas! And guess what? Mr. Jones purchased a GARMIN for our vehicle! In case you are not familiar with what GARMIN is, it is one of those global positioning things that you put on your windshield and it ... talks to you! We've named her "Marilyn" and it's very cool how the system works! It has a 4.3" LCD screen that shows the road ahead and crossroads, etc. It even showed Lake Michigan alongside us all the way to Indiana ... we were SO close to the Lake, but not close enough to see it. It does NOT, however, show railroad tracks (whew!) or small streams or mountains ... stuff like that. It was very fun to use this little gadget all day and never wonder for a minute whether or not we were going the right way!
This is our fifth drive to El Paso since Jesse and his family moved there in May 2007. So it's not that we don't know how to get there. And by now, you know that I love the beautiful scenery all along the way. We reached the Indiana border shortly after 10:00 on this beautiful sunshiny day. The sun glistened off barn rooftops hemmed in by tall healthy perfect rows of corn, vine-encased border fences, surrounded by gorgeous golden wildflowers, mixed in with periwinkle and lacey whites ...
We listened to NPR and were reminded that today is the 70-year anniversary of the beginning of WWII in Europe. They had a bunch of interesting programming related to that.
We ate lunch in Joliet and then listened to disc 1 of A Death in Vienna, by Daniel Silva. Last spring, we listened to one of his other novels on CD as we drove this very same route. As we listened, we traveled past little hillside graveyards, wineries, stables, soy bean fields, feed mills, lonely train tracks, grain elevators, silos ... sheep and cows and ... even llama farms!
We passed through St. Louis at about 4:00 and didn't run into any traffic backups at all.
This is the Meramec River, about a half hour beyond St. Louis ...
We decided to stop for the night in Rolla, Missouri. This is the view from our hotel ... I know, trains follow us everywhere! We stayed here in Rolla on a prior trip, except I can't remember when. I'd look it up on my past blog entries, but the internet here has been giving us a bunch of grief, so I'm going to sign off for the night. We made good time today, but we are pretty tired. I'll try to post again tomorrow!
This is our fifth drive to El Paso since Jesse and his family moved there in May 2007. So it's not that we don't know how to get there. And by now, you know that I love the beautiful scenery all along the way. We reached the Indiana border shortly after 10:00 on this beautiful sunshiny day. The sun glistened off barn rooftops hemmed in by tall healthy perfect rows of corn, vine-encased border fences, surrounded by gorgeous golden wildflowers, mixed in with periwinkle and lacey whites ...
We passed through St. Louis at about 4:00 and didn't run into any traffic backups at all.
This is the Meramec River, about a half hour beyond St. Louis ...
We decided to stop for the night in Rolla, Missouri. This is the view from our hotel ... I know, trains follow us everywhere! We stayed here in Rolla on a prior trip, except I can't remember when. I'd look it up on my past blog entries, but the internet here has been giving us a bunch of grief, so I'm going to sign off for the night. We made good time today, but we are pretty tired. I'll try to post again tomorrow!
1 comment:
Have a great time, Carol! Love you!
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