We had a light day of driving today, so I didn't push the girls for an early start. We checked out of the room, and headed down to breakfast. The full breakfast buffet at the Springhill Suites really makes this an economical way for a family of five to spend the night on the road. We only pay for one room, since the room is big enough to support five people, we have a fridge to store our cooler food overnight, and we save $20 - $30 by not having to buy breakfast at a restaurant. This morning, there were lots of folks wearing Bengals jerseys in the dining room. After a full breakfast of eggs, sausage, belgian waffles, juice and oatmeal, the girls walked out of there with an apple, a banana, and 3 donuts among them. They eat at a buffet like a bunch of homeless people.
We hit the road, and blew through the rest of Tennessee fairly quickly. Nashville marks the point where our return route rejoins the route we took on the way down to Orlando - so it was all looking sort of familiar by now.
Kaybee had her heart set on eating at a KFC in Kentucky for lunch. The irony of it is, once we decided to stop, we couldn't find a KFC anywhere on I-24. We finally found one just across the border into Illinois, at Metropolis (self declared home of Superman). The girls enjoyed the buffet. I was wondering how many months of Weight Watchers I was going to have to endure to make up for these last two weeks.
We stopped at a rest area near Rend Lake in Illinois that had a playground. The girls got out and played for 30 minutes or so, while Elzie stocked up on information for our next vacation from the "Take One" information stand.
We remembered the NL Championship game as we hit I-64, and tuned in to KMOX to see how the Cardinals were doing. Not well, as I recall. We stopped for fuel in O'Fallon ($2.66/gallon - it was finally starting to approach a sane price). Then once across the bridge, with a nice view of the Gateway Arch, we waved goodbye to old Busch Stadium, and before we knew it, we were home.
We hope you've enjoyed reading about our trip as much as we've enjoyed reliving the memories. Wish us luck on our next adventure.
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