Saturday, August 25, 2007

Day 1 - To Southern Ilinois we go...

Steve and I woke up to discover that it wasn't raining and our outlook for the trip down South was warm and dry. Dad had about 1/2 hours worth of rain on his ride over from Indiana, so all in all it was a nice day for all of us.

We had a really enjoyable drive down through lovely, green farm land. I too easily forget how scenic the corn fields, soybeans, etc. are until I come back to visit and take a drive. Lovely groves of trees interspersed throughout the fields, horses, cows, cool old barns....it was really nice. We met up with Dad in Vandalia around 3:30pm. Steve and I pulled in to a gas station and were pulling out a cell phone to see where Dad was and we looked up to see him coming across the street from a nice shady spot. He'd been waiting for about an hour for us to arrive, enjoying the shade and reading his book.

Once we were all together, we had about 94 more miles to our destination. We continued on and as we drew close to the end of our drive, we started seeing all of these motorcycles coming the other direction. Groups of 15 to 25 bikes at a time just kept passing us. We probably saw over a hundred bikes and we waved to them all. I have no idea what the heck was going on in Southern Illinois but it sure was full of bikes. I thought perhaps they had all just dropped off freshman students at SIU and were on their way home ;-)

Speaking of Saluki country, I haven't been down this way for 20 years when I was going to school. I'm going to try and pop over to the campus in the morning to take a couple of pics (if I get up early enough).

We made it to our hotel and found a small, family diner for dinner. Now we're back in our rooms, resting and hanging out. Today was a great start to our trip and we're all excited to really get in to the scenic areas coming up.

We didn't take many pictures today since it was all about high-tailing it down here quickly and hooking up with Dad. We traveled about 350 miles. Click here to see the few pics we did take.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi! Looks like you all are on another adventure together! Wish I could be cruising with you! Give each other huge hugs from Grandma and Me! Love you bunches! XOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXO

Anonymous said...

Glad Dad made it without too much more rain. Sounds like a good start to a great trip. Have Fun!

Anonymous said...

Hi Guys! Hope you have continued success on your trip. Take lots of great pictures. Jeff, Jenny, and Madison

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear that you guys all got together and the rain hasn't been too bad - at least for Kristi and Steve. Hope the next few days will be lots of fun.

Jan and Del