Our morning started with a quick pass by the Toyota Factory in Georgetown, KY where my Sienna minivan was made. I grew up in Detroit, so big factories were nothing new. But it was a surprise to see such a big group of huge buildings busy making vehicles under a blue sky that wasn’t being filled with pollutants. One of the few times I saw that in Detroit was when GM, Ford, and Chrysler all went on strike at the same time.

We covered the same number of miles as we did yesterday plus one (455), and there’s no denying it’s a long, flat ride through the center of the country. Some of the high points of the day were watching the outdoor temperature gauge on the dashboard slowly rise from about 70 up to 95 and back again, dodging a hawk that nearly dropped its prey as it dodged our windshield, taking some lovely backroads that got us off I-64 and its boredom for at least a few miles to discover really healthy looking crops of corn, tobacco and soybean. We drove through the territory where Lincoln spent most of his childhood, passed by the St. Louis Arch, and crossed the Ohio, Mississippi, Wabash, and Missouri Rivers, all of which looked remarkably similar with their breadth and their muddy water. (I’ll be uploading photos as soon as I get a decent signal. We’re camped out in a wireless desert right now.) Despite their relative unattractiveness, (compared at least to a babbling brook following a curving mountain road) you can’t help but feel the awesome power these rivers hold for making the commerce of our country flow smoothly. And the bridges that have been built to cross them are pretty neat too.

The true highlight of our day was a surprise. While studying the map for novel and efficient ways to get around St. Louis without passing straight through the center of its downtown (and almost beneath the Arch), I discovered that Jefferson Barracks was situated off the first exit after crossing the Mississippi and entering Missouri. My father was stationed in Jefferson Barracks during World War II when my brother and sister were youngsters and before I was born (when I was just a glint in my father’s eye, as he used to say.) All these years I’ve envisioned Jefferson Barracks as being a relatively small base situated out in the country with a lot of trees. I discovered it was a huge base built originally in 1825 where notable military men like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, General Sherman and others served (and of course, my father.)  It was decommissioned shortly after the end of World War II. Now it is a VA hospital, with much or the original land given to the city of St. Louis for a park. It was very moving to have a part of my father’s history that I never knew before brought home to me.

Stay tuned for photos!