6-11-21 on to St. Louis

 The day finally came.  Time to drive to St. Louis again.  Only this time as non-residents!  But Ken's been looking forward to his 50th year reunion for over a year now (cancelled last year due to covid).  

We hit the road pretty early---9ish.  Started out pretty cloudy.  Wondered if we were going to be slowed down by rain.  But, no, we were slowed down by trucks passing trucks.

But traffic really wasn't too bad on our way to Chattanooga. 

Even went in and out of Tennessee a couple times and back into Georgia.  Always found that odd.

Finally coming up on Chattanooga and the insane new exit onto 24.  Even navigator had it wrong.  Now you stay on the right side to go left, instead of the way it was before.

But I was aware of the change since Tim had told me about it.  Soon we were going through the mountains of SE Tennessee.

Somewhere along the way we came upon this bridge (Ohio River?) and road construction.  We actually went pretty well until we hit just outside of Illinois and into Mo. 

At least the weather cleared up and it was a beautiful day.

Even a lot of blooming wildflower weeds.

and lots of billowing clouds.

The Midwest is flat, but can have some interesting skies and farmlands.

and LOTS of road construction.  It's not even because of the huge infrastructure bill that was just passed!  This is always going on in I-57.

But it was moving fairly well.

Good old West Frankfort---Mom's former home and we even lived there for about a year while Dad was in Saudi Arabia in about 1967.

When we got to Mt. Vernon, we got off the highway and made our way to the little Mt Vernon Airport to the Bonnie Cafe where we met up with David and Jane for a great visit and dinner.  I thought it neat that they honored the military here in the restaurant.

Shortly before sunset, we were heading through North County St. Louis. 

 Since it wasn't dark yet, we rode by our old house.  It looked pretty good.  At least the new owner seems to be keeping the outside up.  Our old neighbors of 45 years were outside, so we stopped for a visit with them.  They seem pretty happy with the new neighbor.  Seemed odd seeing the house and not being able to go in it, though!

Soon we were on our way to the hotel---Drury Inn and Suites in St. Charles---where we stayed for 4 nights in a 1 bedroom handicap accessible room.