Day Three: Effingham, IL to Salina, KA

Day Three: Effingham, Illinois to Salina, Kansas

Another grey start to our travelling day. Still pretty cold. Sammy’s better though. And our motel room last night was actually nice although still in a truck stop - The Baymont by Wyndham in Effingham, Illinois - pretty fancy. We had a Starbucks very close by where we got our now standard breakfast and found our way back to Interstate 70. Our mission to day is to drive 515 miles to Salina, Kansas where we will spend our third night on the road. I can still smell and taste, so so far so good. That's a COVID joke.

Our first big landmark on today’s drive was St Louis, Missouri. It’s strangely exciting to see a city come into view when you are just driving and driving through countryside. 70 goes right through St Louis, no by-pass, which was dramatic. It’s like all of a sudden you are on Storrow Drive - very old looking infrastructure, and of course that beautiful arch, the Gateway to the West, which is truly huge. We also had to pass over a lovely suspension bridge which Harry took lots of pictures of but you know what? by the time I’m writing this at the end of a 10-hour day in the car, my desire to illustrate with photos is pretty minimal.

I want to say right off the bat that Missouri has piss poor rest stops. Each stop has only one or two old vending machines and those vending machines are behind bars and have nothing you want to eat or drink, so why they have to be locked up is a mystery. On a more positive note, we had sunshine in Missouri and 49 degree weather. Another great thing about Missouri is that Lake of the Ozarks is IN MISSOURI!!! We have been watching Ozarks for the past several weeks but I had no idea Lake of the Ozarks is in Missouri. And the Osage River. That’s about it for Missouri but before we flew into Kansas, we went through Kansas City, Missouri - and then through Kansas City, Kansas. That’s gotta be confusing. Also, Missouri has great road signs - one fudge store boldly claimed there were no calories in road trip food. I’m afraid I am going to be living proof that is not true.

I believe there is a reason we encountered our first 75-mile an hour speed limit in Kansas. You hit Kansas and say goodbye to rolling countryside and beautiful farms, and hello to acres and acres of, at this time of year, fields of hay and grain stubble. One interesting thing did happen while crossing Kansas, we crossed the center point of the contiguous United States. Also, we passed through Abilene Kansas, the home of Dwight D. Eisenhower before he came east at 20 to West Point and Russell, Kansas, the birthplace of Robert Dole.Read more