America the Beautiful - Day Five
Posted by marshall Tue, 30 Dec 2003 19:00:00 GMT
Time to provide an update on the trip so far. We spent Saturday with family in Chicago and celebrated Christmas. The Elfstrand and Williames families finally got their copies of the DVD of Andy and Ingrid's wedding, and were quite happy to see it. On Sunday we went to church with Andy and Ingrid at Crossroads, then joined the rest of the Elfstrands and Williames at Old Country Buffet. Andy and Ingrid left for Dallas that afternoon. Adam, Britany, Dad, and the two of us went to White Castle for dinner.
Yesterday morning, we left for the next leg of our trip. We had a tasty breakfast at Nick's Cozy Corner (a local family restaurant) and left town around 11am CST. We took I-55 to St. Louis, where we visited the famous Gateway Arch. We were surprised by how much there was to see at the Arch, and recommend it highly. We were also surprised by how easy it was to get in and out of St. Louis to visit the Arch. To get from the highway to a destination and back in a foreign city without ever feeling lost is a wonderful thing.
From St. Louis we took I-44 to Springfield, MO. Here we ate dinner at Braums, an ice cream shop (and more!) that my family used to visit frequently when we were living in Dallas. We checked into La Quinta Inn (for which we got a great price on Hotwire) and called it a night.
A couple other items of note: the hotels here in Springfield all have free high-speed Internet access. It wasn't even advertised at La Quinta, but I opened up my PowerBook and immediately got a wireless connection. I don't know how many hotels are doing this, but I hope the pattern keeps up! Also, we noticed a surprisingly large number of "adult" shops/advertisements on the highway here, and just about every one of them had a large billboard next to it with messages like "Porn destroys families" and "Pornography exploits women and children". Interesting.
Today we continue on to Dallas, TX, to visit with Andy and Ingrid for a few days.
This is great! I can follow you across the US without being a bother! :-)