Day #22: Springfield, Illinois

We were hoping for better driving conditions today, but as we pulled out of Tulsa this morning, we were greeted with the same high winds and heavy snow as yesterday! All of the Tulsa area churches were closed.

We crossed over into Missouri by mid-morning, the temperature had risen to just about 32 degrees and we were getting a rain/sleet/snow mixture ...

It was kind of a miserable combination, and the sleet made a terrible racket on the van ... so loud! We saw a number of vehicles in ditches again today.

We ate a quick lunch in Springfield, Missouri, where we listened to lots of horror stories from folk who had traveled south from Kansas City where a foot of snow had fallen, to one family who had driven from northern Arkansas where they had received 9" of snow. We had really hoped to make it all the way home to Michigan today, but it wasn't to be!

After lunch, we drove through pouring down rain all the way to St. Louis. We did have about a 45 minute break with dry pavement, but we encountered fog and then back to heavy rain after that.

Thankfully, we had brought another book on CD along with us; so we listened to a quite a few chapters of "The Broker" by John Grisham, a very fast-paced story so typical of him, and the time passed a bit more pleasantly. It gets a little tedious to be shut up inside the van, not even able to see out the windows (practically), for hours and hours! And the endless trucks!

But look! FINALLY no snow! Green grass! We have reached Illinois and are now resting for the night in Springfield. I think we are about two hours from Chicago, so depending on traffic through that area, we should have about 5-6 hours of driving to do tomorrow. I'm very much looking forward to just returning to Grand Rapids and the quiet of home!