June 22, 2018

Bellbrook, Ohio to St. Louis Missouri

Well the time went too fast but it was time for breakfast and then to say goodbye to John and Sajona . We appreciated their nice hospitality and look forward to our next time getting together.

We were pleased to be able to arrange a nice brunch with our nephew Brian and his wife Laura and their two children, Ian and Alena.  We arrived a bit early so we walked around the plaza in front of the nearby minor league baseball stadium.  Patti couldn't resist one of the big baseballs. We ate at the restaurant where Laura works at manager. We hadn't seen them for a couple years, and it was great to catch up. It's amazing how those kids just keep on growing. We would like to have stayed longer but we had to get on the road.

So driving went pretty smoothly and we quickly move the rest of Ohio, and then the  width of both Indiana and Illinois, and finally we crossed the Mississippi into Missouri.

The plan was to get a hotel close by the Gateway arch in St. Louis which we did. However, you can't always tell what the neighborhoods are like from the Internet and it turned out this was a very isolated hotel in a warehouse, industrial district. The hotel itself was okay but there was literally no restaurant for miles around. The desk clerk told us we could drive into downtown St. Louis or  we could order pizza for delivery. After a long driving day neither of those sounded good. However, Dick was resourceful when he remembered we had lots of random food in our car. So, we pieced together a dinner from our cooler and box of snacks. We were both worn out and ready to go to bed.  We knew we had another big day starting in the morning.