There's not much to say about the drive that first day except that it was long...very long. And we were able to drive for 4 hours at a time, a feat that seemed impossible by the end of the trip. Early on the morning of July 27th we headed out from L's house, scooped up some unfortunate looking low-tide Hingham Harbor water, dropped mail at the post office and...got stuck in rush hour.
So much for the early start. We traveled down across I-90 west, then cut down into Connecticut via I-84. From there we trekked through the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area and hit the first of many road construction areas in Pennsylvania. At one point the merging completely stopped traffic for at least 10 minutes. It was a little ridiculous and every hour or so we hit some sort of lane merging or closures, inevitably slowing us down a little.
By 11PM we'd made it to the Ohio/Indiana border and too late to find the camping ground I'd scouted out, we checked ourselves into a hotel and got some well-deserved rest.
The next day was a much shorter drive, only about 6 hours to St. Louis. However, due to the monotonous landscape of the midwest, the drive felt tedious and long.
Getting to drive along the country roads was actually really fascinating. The corn was at its prime height and the endless fields scattered with farmhouses were quite a sight. Molly, who'd never seen anything like it before, was really astounded and wanted to pull over for pictures.
We found a spot and did our tourist thing. While I was getting a couple of "artsy" photos of the corn I heard a voice asking us what we were doing. The farmer who's corn had become the subject of our photographs had just pulled into his driveway. A very nice man, he didn't care we were taking pictures, just curious as to why. My explanation that we were from Massachusetts and had never seen corn before seemed to humor him enough. Molly and I then hopped back into the car and headed to the farm.
Turns out, it wasn't Abe Lincoln's farm, but his father's. Abe would visit periodically but he never lived there long-term as his father had started it when he was already much older. After spending more time than expected in the visitors center watching the informative video, we finally got to tour the farm. It wasn't huge, just a barn and a few other buildings, and like Plimoth Plantation there were volunteers dressed in period garb demonstrating the chores and tasks of the farm's inhabitants. It was pretty interesting and I could definitely see this as a "field trip destination" for local schools.
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| barn |
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| in the barn |
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| main house |
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| in the house - only bedroom |
Not long after though, we approached the Mississippi River and in the distance we could see the St. Louis Arch, gateway to the west.
