Road Trip Day Two ...

We slept in late this morning ... PLUS due to the time change (daylight savings time ending), we even got an EXTRA hour too! It was nice to not have to rush around to go have fun! We ended up leaving Cedar Rapids around noon...but FIRST we had to stop at a Good Will Store that showed up on the GPS. The Good Will Stores there don't open until noon on Sundays, and there was a line up of people waiting outside. I figured it MUST be a great store since so many people were waiting, but NOOOOO... it wasn't at ALL! Just junky stuff... so we left without my Good Will fix. *L*

But, what a great day to go for a loooong drive... bright, sunny and it got up to 73 degrees (F) too! We didn't stop much along the way today, we were going to head to Branson, MO, but changed our mind and headed for St. Louis instead.



Along the way (I have no idea where we were), we saw a casino and decided to try our luck, hoping to hit it big!! No such luck.. ended up losing the money we saved the night before on our hotel room...(one of Kasey's friends got us discount coupon friends and family rates on hotels along the way)...ohhh well... at least we had fun TRYING to hit it big for about an hour and a half..*L*




And then it was back on the road again....



Kasey and I always sing to the songs on the radio when we are driving... kind of like Road Trip Karaokee..*L* Kasey had the idea to tie the camera to the bottom of the rearview mirror and turn on the video portion, then, as we drove down the road, we'd have a video mix of some songs we had sung along the way.




It was so fun to do that, because the camera would sway back and forth and even though the road wasn't real bumpy, it sure looked like it was. I combined all the songs clips and some other clip art into a short montage of Road Trip Karoakee. I won't show the video here, but here are some fun clips from us singing..*L*




We reached St. Louis about 6 p.m., and of course it had already been dark for about 40 minutes (I hate it when it gets dark so early now that DL Savings Time is over).
One of Kasey's friends had told her about a Blues Club downtown, so we went to see where it was before finding a hotel. The entertainment there didn't start until 9 p.m., and we were told the food was great there too! So we found it and figured maybe we'd try to find a downtown hotel to stay at. But when I pulled into the parking lot of a White Castle less than half a block away, so we could check the GPS listings of hotels close by, Kasey decided to run in and use the bathroom there. No sooner had she left the car when an older woman came out of nowhere and was knocking on my drivers side car window. I didn't roll down the window, and asked her if she needed something? She said, "Yes". She said she was pregnant with twins and was hungry and would I give her money for food. But, she also had a hand shaking problem, and red eyes, and she appear to me to be about 65 -70 years old, a bit old to be pregnant, and she scared me. I told her, no, I wouldn't be able to help her, and she left and proceeded to 2 more cars, probably asking the same thing, and being told no by them evidently too.

Kasey came running out, jumped in the car, and I told her I wasn't going to be comfortable going to that Blues Club, with the neighborhood people near here, and it didn't appear to have any parking available except street parking. So, we decided not to chance having our car broke into and to find a hotel someplace else. Since the downtown hotels all looked like they were more than we wanted to spend, we headed out of town about 10 miles and found a nice hotel on the outskirts of St. Louis.




We also found a good authentic mexican restaurant nearby, ordered some dinner to go, had some liquid libations while we waited for our order, and headed back to our room where we ate (waaay too much!), edited some photos, and decided to call it an early night again.

Soooo, this is the end of day two... looking forward to day three and exploring St. Louis tomorrow!