Day 2: 6/3/24
From: Pigeon Forge, TN
To: St. Louis, MO
Distance: 517 miles

A later start today, leaving at 10 am, but the best pancakes for breakfast. Yum! Flapjack’s Pancake Cabin comes highly recommended (by us). Bonus? Everything can be made gluten-free. (Which is a major plus when you spent an hour the night before trying to figure out what your kid can eat that’s safe!)

4 hours into our drive and Younger Child announces the’ve got to find a way to get rid of time. (Which I think means they’re planning to sleep.) Not a bad idea considering none of us slept super well in a hotel room with so much snoring and coughing as I’m still getting over last week’s cold…

We hit Kentucky today, the idea of which seemed more interesting before we got there. I hated missing out on it last time (thanks to Hurricane Bill), so I was glad to check it off my list this time around. Pretty! But also? Long. So long.

As we drive, the land around us starts to change, flattening, expanding into long straight stretches with no views thanks to thick foliage along the road. The rocks, mostly slate back home in Pennsylvania, are now changing too, from giant chunks of limestone to sandstone slabs.

And then…

It changes back again as we head into Illinois. Which. May be the country’s most boring state. We drove through Chicago last time, so it somehow seemed more exciting. Not so much when it comes to the southern part of the state.

But wait. What *is* that noise? Cicadas! By the thousands! We can hear them even over the road noise of the car. And yes, a few unfortunate souls made some very big splats on the windshield. 

We finally make it to St. Louis, but not without the kind of weather that makes us a little nervous. We’re east coasters. We don’t do tornadoes. Thankfully, no tornadoes in sight, but the skies didn’t really look all that happy regardless, and we pulled into St. Louis in the pouring rain.

Older Child once again got to meet up with a longtime friend from the internet, who drove 2 1/2 hours with their mom to meet us for the evening. The terrible weather moved out, leaving us with a spectacular views we got to enjoy from the top of the Gateway Arch.

Dinner at Carmine’s Steak House, where the husband enjoyed a(nother) chocolate martini. I think I might have seen this picture somewhere once before…

Day 2 down. More adventures to come.