7:45am we rolled out of the driveway for the second time this summer for a little cross-state jaunt. This trip will be nineteen days instead of the earlier trip of five days. The van is loaded down with all the usual gear except for the climbing equipment.

We stopped for lunch and satisfied what should clearly be a daily requirement: ice cream.  Well, we actually had a Frosty, but I let it pass for satisfying the ice cream requirement for today.  In all seriousness, I was just excited we stopped for lunch.  Scott isn’t much into lunch on our trips, so a warm meal and time to stretch our legs is always a treat.  We drove through where we went to school at SIUE and past the arch.  It was difficult to get the kids to see anything and pull their heads up from their tablets for long, but they did take a peak at the arch.  I’ll always remember our trip to the arch when Cody was two and was done waiting in line.  Scott said I should let him roam and see if he would come back.  Turns out he decided to adopt a new family instead.

Just a few minutes after two pm, when our bellies were full and the Frosties were gone, I drove. At 2:15 there was a fatal collision on Interstate 44 near Six Flags Saint Louis.  They shut down the Interstate for two hours.  A woman from Aurora, IL was ejected from the passenger seat of the car her relative was driving. He was driving too fast and hit the guardrail.  The woman’s eleven-year old son was also ejected from the vehicle even though he had his seatbelt on.The boy survived, but his mom did not.  We didn’t know the details of the crash as we drove through the dozens of emergency vehicles, but there were kid backpacks on the side of the road. It was a somber moment.

The first two hours of me driving we only managed to turn the odometer twenty-six miles.   Thankfully no one had to use the bathroom and the temperature was unseasonably cool after the recent storm. The temperature was hovering in the upper seventies.  Thankfully, other than some heavy rain, the rest of the drive down to Springfield, MO was calm.

We finally arrived to our destination around 7pm. Kids’ bellies were rumbling so we jumped into the self-proclaimed Fun Mobile and headed to dinner at a super fun Japanese restaurant.  They had a sushi table where your sushi order came delivered to you via a floating boat.

Our chef was quite entertaining and kept calling our kids Shrimp and Chicken.  We demonstrated how eggs like to have fun on the egg slide.  The food was incredibly delicious and it just kept coming.

We celebrated Cody’s eighth birthday, since it was only a few days prior.

Thankful for an incredible meal and fantastic company.