The Drive to AZ Part 2

Continuing on our drive, here we are entering Indiana. We stopped for dinner at Mickey D's and this play area had video games that Nathan pretended to play: And just because she is so cute: And the sun sets on our first day of driving, though we still have many miles to cover before we can rest: And here we are entering Illinois:
After Illinois we entered Missouri. When entering Missouri you enter into St Louis, and of course you can see the Gateway Arch. We were a bit mesmerized by the Arch and crossing the Mississippi River and also trying to make sense of what our GPS was telling us to do, so we don't have a pic of the "Welcome to Missouri" sign.

We knew before we left where we wanted to be each night before we stopped, and considering we had made arrangements to stay with people along the way, we really had to meet our driving goals. Our first stop was in St Louis, MO. There we stayed with a family whom we had never met, but had graciously agreed to let us stay with them for the night. Since we left Michigan several hours later than we anticipated we were afraid we'd have to find a hotel instead. Around 9pm, our anticipated arrival time in St Louis our GPS gave us an ETA of about midnight St Louis time (so 1am MI time). We called the family we were staying with and said we wouldn't be there until that late and would completely understand if that was too late and they would rather us not come, but we were told to come and get there when we got there. So sweet!

We spent the next morning in St Louis and visited the Arch and a local custard stand that I was told is a must do in St Louis. Driving to the Arch we noticed the Mississippi River waters were a tad bit high, flooding several areas making it impossible to walk along the river. It looked like the flooding did quite a bit of damage.


They have these little pod like things that take you to the top of the Arch. They seat 5 people and the doors are quite small. Nathan wasn't too sure of it.The Mississippi River, views from the top, you can see the flooding:

Views from the other side of the Arch:


Back on the ground:We saw this sculpture while trying to get back to the freeway:

We hopped back on the freeway, stopped off for some custard then hit the road, next stop Oklahoma CIty. Look for more to come about the rest of our journey!