Birthday party, one BIG arch, and a LONG drive

Lawrence, KS

On our first day of our big trip, we left home at about 8:30 in the morning. We were pretty proud of ourselves, considering our goal had been 8:00, so only 30 minutes late when leaving for a big vacation was pretty good for us!

Our first stop was a brief one in DeMotte to pick up and drop off a couple of items at my sister Phyllis' house. Then on to Lafayette, where we had a lunch and a little birthday party for Leah (whose birthday is tomorrow) with Tom's family. We also dropped off Jolie, who will be staying with Tom's parents while we're gone. The kids hated to say good-bye to her, but we know she'll have fun running around with Homer, and will get to go for a walk everyday while she's there.

We were then on to some serious driving. We had to make it all the way to Lawrence, Kansas by nightfall. However, when passing through St. Louis, we realized it would be pretty easy to swing through downtown and look at the Gateway Arch, which the kids had seen about 7-8 years ago, but Chloe couldn't even remember. So we had a long supper stop, and took lots of great pictures of the arch, ate a quick supper at Subway, and then hopped back in the car.

Finally, about 12:30 a.m. our time (11:30 in Kansas) we pulled into our Springhill Suites hotel. However, we soon found out they had overbooked, and our room was gone. They sent us down the road instead to the Hampton Inn, which turned out to be a nice hotel, and (as far as we can tell) FREE to us! So not a bad deal for our first night's lodging.