Almost home...

Yesterday morning we continued driving down the Great River Road along the Mississippi River, crossing back and forth through Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. The GRR is scenic, especially when it's within sight of the river, but it takes a dang long time and we spent two full days not getting very far very fast while driving it. So we eventually skirted St. Louis and headed east on our old friend U.S. Highway 50, stopping for the night in Salem, Illinois.

Dang, but there's a lot of corn in Iowa and Illinois. Now I know where my cornbread comes from.

This morning we awoke earlyish, for us, by seven, ate breakfast at a diner in Salem called Austin's, and continued east on 50 through Illinois and Indiana, with a detour to Madison, Indiana for candy at Mundt's and the best sundaes ever. Instead of continuing to Cincinnati, we decided to plunge into Kentucky and go south to Frankfort to pick up I-64, which heads straight back to Charlottesville, although we might take further detours before we get back. We've avoided interstates as much as possible unless we really just needed to cover a lot of ground quickly, but we've gone rather slowly the past few days and I'm a little eager to get home. We stopped for the night in Charleston, West Virginia, which puts us within a few hours of home.