Onward To Kansas City

Yesterday's Chautauqua Sunrise From Stedman Road

It's now 6:00 and still dark dark outside.  I am sitting at the breakfast bar at our Best Western, sipping my coffee, telling myself I don't need sausage gravy and biscuits.  We will take our time this morning as we only have a six hour drive to our son Tom's home in Lee's Summit, a suburb of Kansas City. And we hopefully will only have some heavy traffic as we go around St. Louis.  This segment, from St. Louis to Kansas City is boring, flat, fields, scrub, or urban scrawl.

Cavalcade Of Trucks Dominate Interstate 70

Goodbye, Ohio

Hello, Indiana

We left Thursday morning just about 7:30 and our GPS's prediction was right on, indicating we would arrive at 3:30, (4:30 Chautauqua Time), a nine hour drive.  We were fortunate to have good weather and no traffic problems, whizzing through the cites and environs of Cleveland, Columbus, and Indianapolis until we got to bubbling metropolis of Effingham, Illinois, our first stop of the journey. Not a bad drive and it seemed to go fast.

Flat Lands Of Indiana

Silos Of Illinois

We got to our Best Western(used to be a Hampton Inn), as I mentioned, around 3:30 and relaxed, surfed the Net and watched TV until we got hungry, about 5:30.

Effingham, Finally 

We walked across the street to our favorite Lone Star Steak House and sat down at the empty bar, hoping to meet some interesting people as we have in the past.  Alas, it was not to happen last night as we sat alone and lonely for most of our dinner.  We were forced improvise, to talk with each other.  A couple did sit down but they were a couple of chairs away, too far to talk.  We got the special, two dinners and a appetizer for 25 bucks. Mine, a chicken fried steak with garlic mashed and gravy was great; Evie's, a grilled chicken breast with a dollop of pico de gallo, was a ridiculously small chicken breast. Even the server had to laugh. But the beers were fine and we got to be back at our room early.  We watched a couple of episodes of Chopped before falling asleep around 9:30, early for us.

A poem for these troubled times...one of our favorites:

                               The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.