Jam

Day 3: Wednesday, September 2nd

After spending the night in the deserted city of Cleveland, we went to see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  Pat half-expected to wake up and see tumbleweeds rolling across the city streets, but we actually encountered residents of the city. One of the other oddities: absolutely no foot or vehicle traffic. No backups at lights, no people beeping, no crowded sidewalks.

The hall of fame itself was very cool. The building design was neat and the exhibits were well done. It’s fascinating to see these diverse genres of music – blues, gospel, r&b, and country/folk – come together to form rock & roll. Those were my favorite portions – the ones devoted to history and origins of rock. The special exhibition was Bruce Springsteen. Pat is a big fan, so he loved that one.

We spent a few hours going through the museum, grabbed a bite, and got back on the road. The final destination was St. Louis – about a 9 hour ride total. First things first – the countryside in Ohio is very boring and not so pretty and it goes on forever. Definitely our least favorite state so far. We crossed through Indiana and started across Illinois, crossing our first time zone along the way. One down, two to go.

I had picked Effingham, Illinois as the place to stop for the night. Lots of hotels and about 7 hours of the ride knocked off. Unfortunately they had other plans that night and every single hotel was booked up. Eff you, Effingham. We ended up driving another 45 minutes, until about 9:30, to Vandalia. It wasn’t actually so bad since it pushed us closer to St. Louis. There was a pool & hot tub at the hotel, which was much needed.

Day 4: Thursday, September 3nd

Yesterday was awesome! We started out with a 1 hour drive, crossing the remainder of Illinois and the Mississippi River into St Louis. The Gateway Arch is by far the dominating structure in the skyline. I think it’s taller than just about every building in the city (630 feet). We stopped to walk around the waterfront and the arch for a bit. The waterfront in St. Louis sucked, which was a little surprising to me. Nothing to see except for a few dilapidated riverboats and casinos.

The city itself is nice. Pat wanted to walk down by Busch Stadium and we toured a bit of the city on the way. We talked about trying to see a game, but I checked the schedule beforehand and it didn’t look like it would work. On the way to the ballpark everyone was wearing Cardinals gear, but we assumed the city just took a lot of pride in their teams. It turned out I read the schedule wrong – there was a 1:15 afternoon game! We picked up a couple of cheap bleachers tickets and saw the Cardinals play the Brewers. Two things: Prince Fielder is a built like a mini bus, and Albert Pujols is pretty huge. I guess the stadium is 2 years old or so.. what a beautiful park. I love Fenway, but new parks have a certain appeal.

We left after the 7th inning since there was still a lot of driving to do.  After a midday beer and baseball game, I wasn’t really feeling it. Fueled by trail mix and tunes (Stones best of, Zeppelin IV, Coda), we pushed on. On this leg of the trip, my GPS had its first tweak out. Sometimes it decides on a route which is possibly faster than staying on the interstates, but takes you down some country bumpkin roads. We spent about 60 miles on those kinds of winding, one lane highways, driving through towns with populations less than one thousand. It was nice in some ways – we saw some of the country side. And something in the Missouri air smells really, really good.

At about 9:30 we rolled into Fayetteville, dropped our stuff off at Pat’s Aunt’s house, and went to see Greg and Jen for a while. They’re down here in graduate school for communication and poetry, respectively.