March 29th

So today is another day of full travelling for the Friesens. Today I decided to jot down notes as we go so we can remember more. It will sure be nice to look back at!

We left Charles City Super 8 Hotel (or was it Motel? I'm not sure, but by golly it was the cleanest hotel I have ever been at!) We saw beautiful landscapes and it started to get hilly.

Chris started us out driving this morning *GASP* (I let him drive?) yeah, I did. It was all good. We turned back onto the HWY to Cedar Falls and headed out!

Many many beautiful barns graced the landscape and it was nary a farmhouse you saw that didn't have a barn. we only saw two overall in 2 hours of travel.

We came across many lovely horse barns where i quickly turned green with envy!

The back highways were slushy this morning after a blanket of snow fell in the area. We navigated them just fine being from Manitoba and all you know! We travelled through Black hawk County one of the bigger county's in IA.

The pictures of the barns don't do justice to the scenery, *sigh* they will have to do.

We also saw a round barn, in fact by the time we stopped for the day we had seen at least 3. They are so cool!

We passed through a little town called Amana and it's an old town and most of the houses are made of brick and are beautiful. Amana was also the first place we started to see green grass! It was so neat to see green grass! We then headed on to Coralville IA and wanted to stop and eat, but the wait at one restaurant was so long, we headed back out and drove hoping to find something soon as we had eaten at 7:30 and it was 12:47. Funny how travel can make you hungry!

The creeks in IA are not very full and I'm sure the folks in the Fargo area would love to see their creeks like that. I wondered to Chris is perhaps IA has had some drought in the last couple years and the ground is soaking up the moisture. But then later that day in IL we passed a sign saying there is a flash flood warning.

The terrain started to get very hilly and we would have compared it to the foothills in Alberta.

Going farther down South we noticed that the American accent is much more prominent. In Coralville we noticed there were quite a few businesses shut down but the Cedar Rapids newspaper reports that IA isn't hit as bad as the rest of the country. The recession seems more real now that's we're in the states.

We still hadn't eaten and are driving towards Mount Pleasant and we were really hoping to come across a small town to eat.

AH! We did! We stopped in Ainsworth IA to eat and change our route once again. It was a small town restaurant with small town friendly service and good food. We are currently eating the leftovers as our super in our hotel room after our swim.

We were back on the road at 1:48 pm about 45 minutes later. We thought we'd wait to fuel up as we didn't really need fuel just yet. We are happy with our truck and are consistently getting 19.8 miles per gallon. We fueled up in West Burlington IA just outside Burlington IA. We entered our 3rd state at 2:45 which was Illinois.

The fields there were green and started to grow already! It looked like early May in Manitoba. So neat. The temperature gradually warmed up the farther south we went (really Jacklyn? I can hear all your sarcasm! :)) It also looks like there has been some local flooding and devastating damage to some lower areas in IL. In Industry IL at 3:58pm it was 7 degrees C! And it felt way warmer than Steinbach's 7 degrees! We came to Beardstown IL at 4:38, we drove through many small towns down the back highways and started to notice that the land was getting flat again. It's too bad, because we really enjoyed the hillier terrain.

So where are we you ask? We are currently in Fairview Heights about 13 miles outside of St. Louis Missouri! I can't believe we are here! We briefly entered Missouri and then turned around and came back to IL. We entered Missouri to take in the Arch, which is the gateway to the West!. We also saw some amazing old places and buildings in the part of Missouri we were in. We crossed the Mississippi River again ( I think that's the 3rd time) and took a wrong turn and ended up in a not so good area of but promptly turned around and headed right back out. We didn't get to see the arch as close up as we wanted, but we were glad to see the arch anyway it is truly beautiful especially in the sunset.

We decided that we wouldn't stay right in St. Louis, but just outside of the city. Which brings us to Fairview Heights. We are staying in the Best Western and arrived here about 8pm and promptly took in the pool. We are done in the pool and getting ready for bed. We plan to take in the free Continental Breakfast and then head out to KY. We hope to travel the back HWY's of Kentucky and see many wonderful horse farms and such!

So we've been through MN, IA, IL, & MO so far. We will see what the rest of the week brings!

I have posted a link for today's pictures. But thought I'd post just a few here too.

Thanks for your prayers of safety and for thinking of us. We truly appreciate it.

Till tomorrow,

Jacklyn

PS- yes there are some blurry pictures, which we took. Just think how fast we are going! :)

Here are the links for the pictures.

March 28

March 29