A day in the "Show Me" State

With a brisk north wind, but light traffic we completed our second day of travel by landing in our planned destination of Springfield, Missouri.

Each night before we travel Joan always asks me the same question: “What time do you want to leave?” This requires me to plot out in my head the next day’s itinerary with an eye to avoiding rush hour traffic in major cities while pulling a trailer.

So for our trip to Springfield, I came up with a time of 8:30 a.m. from Terre Haute. Because it takes Joan forever, I mean a long time to get ready, I always back that time up 90 minutes for our wake up time. Still, we usually leave a few minutes after the appointed time, which is really no big deal but I still make a humorous issue of it when we leave late.

“Look at the time, it’s 8:40 a.m. and now we’re going to get caught in St. Louis traffic,” I’ll say with a big smile.

Joan is not a morning person, actually she’s not even a mid-morning person. So getting her up at 7 a.m. presents a few challenges of its own. So, it was with great apology that I noticed that when we crossed into Illinois that we actually gained an hour that I forgot to figure into my calculations the night before.

“We were not 10 minutes late getting started, but 50 minutes early,” Joan reminded me as I admitted my mistake.

I know I have mentioned this pet peeve before, probably way too much, but people who do not know how to merge onto a freeway should not be allowed to drive. They are a bigger hazard than cellphone users by far.

Pulling a large trailer presents a lot of obstacles, but trying to stop that thing in a short distance because someone doesn’t know what a gas pedal is for is very frustrating. I try to move over and give them room, but as a slow moving vehicle (I rarely drive faster than 60-65 mph) it is sometimes difficult to find a gap to move into.

It seemed like everywhere we looked people were climbing on a tower or working on a high billboard along the freeway. “Must be ‘high’ day,” Joan said at one point. Plenty of construction zones, but that’s not unusual.

Couple of notables from today: We passed through Ft. Leonard Wood, which was one of the places that Joan's father trained before heading overseas in World War II. Also, I wish we had more time here because Springfield was the site of a Civil War battle "Wilson's Creek." We have already decided that we will make a return visit to the area.

Also we traveled along the old famous Route 66 for part of the day. Kind of cool to see the old 66 signs.

OK, so  other than that we had a fairly uneventful travel day through Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. St. Louis has a special place for Joan and I as that was the place we were engaged more than 12 years ago. Crossing the Mississippi River with the trailer marked a special milepost in our long wished for travel plans. This is one of the trips we always dreamed about when we were both working.

Our prayer is that those of you reading this will remind yourself that dreams do come true. Just keep dreaming.

Mileage out:  75387
Time out: 8:44 a.m. (Eastern time)

Mileage in: 75786
Time in: 2:44 p.m. (Central time)