Whew!

Thirteen hours on the road today. I'm in Mitchell, South Dakota. It looks a bit like this: (BTW I took these pictures sight unseen from the car -- the ultimate point and click!)


After driving 13,400 km on this trip, I have a driving tip to share. STAY AWAY FROM ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI!
I went to bed really early last night, got up a bit after 4:00 am and was on the road by 5:00. Mt. Vernon is about 60 miles east of St. Louis. It was dark, and early, but there were tons of trucks on the road. I decided to just stay on I-70 rather than trying to negotiate the ring road (it's darn hard to find and follow because it changes along the way). Just as I remember, the lanes shift with some going off to the right and some to the left. If I stayed in what I thought was the centre lane, I soon found that the centre lane became the right hand lane and it had the yellow "Exit Only" sign. The signage was confusing, even though I knew I just had to follow the signs to Kansas City and follow the GPS. On top of all that, I ran into a big construction project that had us lined up and stopped for several minutes as three lanes had to merge into one. The reason for that construction was a huge new bridge being built -- beautiful and striking. It may well be a partner to the big steel arch that is so recognizable. It took me two hours to get out of the heavy traffic -- just in time to enter the Kansas City traffic. By now, of course, it was morning rush hour so I joined many others in heading up I-29 which goes right by the KC International Airport.

After that little adventure, the drive was just long and pretty much uninteresting. About one-half or one-third of the route was also under construction and the four lane freeway became a two lane road with speed restrictions. I just kept going, stopping only for gas. I ate the left-over pizza from Pine Knot and drank coke as I drove.

One very good thing about Iowa rest stops is that they all have free WiFi. When I realized that I would be able to make it to Mitchell, I just stopped at a rest stop, hauled out the laptop, and reseved a room online. Great.

As I drove further north, the scenery became more interesting. There are huge corn fields -- all looking bronze and yellow with no green at all. It must be the kind of corn that is harvested as a whole rather than just the ears. At first, I wasn't sure if it were some other kind of golden grain ready for harvesting, but when I could see fields that were growing closer to the highway, I could see that it was, indeed, corn. Along the side of the highway, there was also some kind of shrub that was covered with light yellow flowers interspersed with brighter yellow brown-eyed susans. It was really very attractive.

Once I made the turn west on I-90, it was all prairie. It looks so open and clean -- very pretty. When Lila and I drove this way, we ran into a huge rainstorm with rainbows and all. It was sunny with a bright blue sky today.

I'm still operating on Eastern time. This is well into the Central Time Zone, but I'm saving the change till I need the boost of "gaining" an hour. There's nothing else to do tonight and I'm tired, so I think I'll just go to bed early and get going first thing tomorrow. It's easy driving -- straight, light traffic (after all, where is there to go?). I'm hoping to get to Billings at least, but will make that decision along the way. If I find that I'm having accumulated fatigue, I'll stop earlier or maybe stop in the middle of the day and stay somewhere before Billings. Once I get a good look at where the motels are along the way, I'll head to bed.

I also finally got my Satellite Radio working, so I' ve thoroughly enjoyed lots of good programming. I also bought a novel from I-Tunes, so I'll get it on the iPod -- lots of things to do tomorrow!