Montpelier Ohio to Rolla Missouri

There were a few flies in our room this morning as a result of having left the door open last evening. Although I am not good at smacking them, I noticed the large bank type elastic I use to hold some cords together. Shooting the elastic at them wiped out the entire bunch in less than a minute. Now I have a sport to keep me amused on the road.

The roads were still wet this morning but the sky had stopped precipitating. We took our time and put on full rain suits before heading out about 8:00 AM. We followed secondary roads to the Fort Wayne, Indiana by-pass and followed I-69 towards Indianapolis. As we had breakfast in a roadside Mickey D’s, we talked about stowing some rain gear since the pavement was drying out. Sandy suggested not to. Smart lady, since we caught some active rain while skirting Indianapolis on I-465. This was the last rain of the day.

The miles rolled by effortlessly. Terre Haute, Effingham, St. Louis. I phoned Sherm from a rest area in Illinois as we were removing our rain gear. He, Karen and Preston were in Branson and would be catching a couple of shows and spending the night. He suggested that if we turned the wick up a bit we could get there this evening. I said we would see, but that’s another 440 miles and it was already noon.

Near Greenville Illinois, there is a federal prison next to the Interstate that looks like a bunch of Microtel hotels stuck together. Out front, there is an obstacle course/training facility that, today, had many police cruisers. Officers in fatigues were running some kind of exercise in the field. First time I have ever seen any action there.

As we left St. Louis on I-44, the traffic eased up and we ran until we needed fuel in Rolla Missouri. It was 4:30 and we had covered almost 600 miles so we called it quits. They have a Drury Inn here. Nice rooms, hard wired High Speed Internet, a manager’s reception from 5:30 to 7:00 with beer, win and snacks plus a hot breakfast in the morning. It cost more than I would have paid in Branson, but not unreasonable. We had supper at a Steak ‘n Shake. Another first.

I talked to Mom tonight and she said if you laid out the route I took to get here it looked pretty odd. I had to agree. Ted Boyd, if you are reading this, you were right about the way to go. The weatherman was wrong and I was wrong to listen to him. But WTH, if I had gone the right way I’d still be waiting to meet Scruffy.

We’ll be in ES fairly early tomorrow. Then the fun can begin. Oh wait. We’ve been having fun all along:-)