Road Trip 2010! Part 3

The trip home was fun, but we (mostly Davis and I!) were really ready to be out of the car by the end! The drive from Memphis to Little Rock is not fun even under the best of circumstances, and at 2 a.m. it's particularly sucky. It's also scary - there were weaving semis and I was terrified of drunk drivers. Also, what's up with cops in Illinois? Anyone? Every time I pulled over to nurse Henry (whether on the side a country road or a car wash parking lot) we had a police man or sheriff's deputy come by to see what we were doing.

First we drove around Appleton for a while, so I could show Davis the town where my cousin lives - I'm working on convincing him to move up there ;)

The first day of driving I had a migraine, and honestly I don't really remember the day - we just made it to somewhere in the middle of Illinois and then stopped at the first decent hotel with a pool. Henry and I went to bed at like 8 p.m. while Davis took the girls swimming (again, hotel pools = awesome). Then the next morning I took the girls swimming while Davis caught some soccer, and we were back on the road.

We booked it to St. Louis. The weather report said 50% chance of rain, so we decided if it was rainy we would go to a pirate or dinosaur exhibit in the city, but if it was sunny Davis wanted to go to Cahokia. I don't know if I've mentioned it, but Davis was an archeologist for 15 years, and Cahokia is the largest archeological site in the U.S. Well, when we got close, it was storming hard, but when we actually got to the site it wasn't. Davis said "ah, look how the blades of grass are blowing - there's NO WAY the rain will come this way." Famous last words. Seriously, I call Davis the anti-weather man. But still, we went to Cahokia, where we scarred Amelia for life.

In the museum at the site, there was a recreation of the Cahokian village, which was really cool.

(sorry for the bad pic - no flash allowed)

BUT there was a model of a deer carcass with no head, which had fake blood coming out of it. Amelia FREAKED out. She called it "the blood animal" and she's still talking about it. No amount of explanation helped. Ooops.

Then Davis decided the girls had to walk up the tallest mound even though, you guessed it, it was raining heavily at this point. Lucky for me Henry got hungry, so I had to stay behind and nurse him in the car.

It was actually good, because the girls saw tons of wildlife from up there and it wore them out. Plus, it wouldn't really be a family vacation without a memory like "Dad made us walk up this Indian mound in the rain."

Then, back on the road. This was as close as we got to the arch. St. Louis is cool, and we're looking forward to going back to check out all the sights we didn't get a chance to see.

We decided to stop at a huge arcade pizza germ buffet nightmare place for dinner, just to make sure the girls really were worn out. I think Davis had the most fun ha ha!

At about 7 pm, we headed back home. The kids slept most of the way, which was the plan. I couldn't believe it when Sophia started asking to go on vacation again just two days later. But Amelia said "that Indian place with the blood animal - let's NOT go there!"