Yesterday morning we woke up more than nice 'n early - before 5 AM... and wide awake too, so there was no sense in staying in bed. Luckily I remembered to wish Henk a happy birthday, he reacted with great surprise, I think he had forgotten in the excitement of getting on the road.
The car was packed, so all we had to do was (Henk) mount the bike carrier and bike, (me) make coffee and a bite to eat, and (both of us) pile ourselves and our last two bags in the car. Four bags. Five bags. Tsk tsk - still, much less than when we came home in April, so we're doing good.

We turned out of the driveway at 6:14 AM, 27 degrees, barely dawn. We took rte 3 into MA, then 495 and straight west on rte 2 until 190. This took us past Wachusett mountain. The sun was just about coming up and made for lovely oranges and reds under a bit of frost. The plan was to see the fall colors of the Berkshires with the warm morning sunlight behind us and that worked excellently. By the way, it turns out I have had a mental block about fall colors. We're now in St. Louis and we've seen blazing yellow, orange and red on and off through every state we passed through. Apparently there are red swamp maples in NY, PA, OH, IN, and IL as well as in New England ;)

Past Worcester we took rte 90 west and stayed on it. It's a bit shorter, the road surface is excellent, the rest areas are very nice - and with the EZ-pass, we won't even know what the tolls amounted to until we get our statement in a few weeks. So we came by Albany, Rochester, Buffalo and Erie, PA. Just before Cleveland, OH we left rte 90 to get to Akron, where we spent the night with the first 695 miles behind us. Because we left so early we got to the hotel by 6:30. Put our stuff in the room and turned around to go out for a special birthday dinner: steak filet for Opa, baby back ribs for me, and carrot cake/pecan brownie for dessert. Yum.
The landscape was nothing spectacular, but friendly with low wooded hills and lots of sky. Hardly any towns. To prevent boredom we started tracking state number plates and we had 23 states by the end of the day.

This morning we "slept in" until 7 and we were back on the road at 8, fully light, 65 degrees. Today's distance was only around 500 miles. From Akron we took rte 76 for a little ways, 71 and then 70 past Columbus and Indianapolis and on to St. Louis. It cracks me up that Miss TomTom tells us that in 178 miles we have to keep to the left... I guess she wants us to know well ahead of time what's coming up so we won't be surprised... We got more bored today than yesterday - the landscape has large sections of flat farmland and that just isn't very exciting. We only added 8 more states to the number plate count. I retrieved the crochet project from the trunk and we played golden oldies on the iPod.

We had to get through a "weather system" today, which meant clouds, no clouds, clouds, no clouds, a few rain sprinkles here and there, but mostly a lot of wind. I remember this from last year too on this same stretch of road. Your arms get really tired from pulling in the same direction at the steering wheel for hours and hours. Our sunglasses went on and off and on and off, the temperature rose to 75 degrees and the AC went on, until the next section of clouds, a shower, and the temp dropped back to 63.

We enjoyed lunch in the stiff breeze at a rest stop at the Illinois border, and had trader Joe soup (creamy corn and spicy peppers, as good cold as hot) and pita crackers. I have another pack of soup - tomato and roasted red pepper - I think we'll have it Tuesday. This way we won't overdose on fast food as quickly. We got extra fresh veggies in at dinner.

We arrived at our hotel a little after 4 EDT and apparently missed the only good part of the Pats - Seahawks game. All we saw was rain, field goals and balls slipping out of everybody's hands. Meanwhile Henk was - still is - trying to fix a technical glitch on his computer that prevents him from having his computer involved in his phone meetings tomorrow. I hope he can work things out with the tech support guy.

Tomorrow is Monday morning, we have to get through St. Louis in the morning peak, and the road is under repair. So we want to get going early again. Should be easy enough since our bodies are still on EDT anyway.