Lebanon, Missouri.

Earl and I have settled for the night at the Hampton Inn in Lebanon, Missouri. Earl had wrapped up his work obligations early, so we packed up the hotel room, jumped in the Jeep and headed west. Our original intention was to stop for the night in St. Louis, but since we were way ahead of schedule, we thought we’d keep on going until we got tired. We thought we’d make it to Springfield, Mo., another 200 or so miles beyond St. Louis. Well we made it as far as Lebanon, about 50 miles northeast of Springfield. It was getting a little foggy for driving, since neither of us have ever been on Interstate 44 in Central Missouri.

Earl snapped some pretty good pictures through St. Louis, he posted a really nice picture on his blog.

Mother Nature treated us to a couple of nice thunderstorms for the ride after St. Louis. She put on quite a lightning show and gave us some showers to slide around in. The weather kept me attentive to my driving but neither of us were nerved up or anything. I was able to enjoy the mild storm.

Now I’m going to plan out the route for the next couple of days and catching up on blogs. Tomorrow we hit the road fairly early, hoping to drive a bit and get our kicks on old Route 66.