KC to St Louis, and a traffic jam.

And we were off!  We left about 10 AM which seems late but pretty good for us on a departure from our house.  Seems there is always one more thing to tend to before you can actually leave.  In my case it was some bills that were in the mail box.  Insurance premiums they seem never ending.

We rounded KC on 435 and 470 out to I 70 East.  We have been over that stretch of road so many times, that we wouldn't see something of interest even if it was on the median of the highway.  Traffic was typical KC with the crazies zooming around the motorhome and pulling into the front so close that you think they will take off the front end.  They do that with semi trucks too, so it is no wonder truckers get frustrated.


We finally stopped at the Pilot station in Booneville for a Wendy's and a spot of Diesel.  They made me pay for the fuel before they would turn on the pump, so you have to pick an amount that you know will fit in the tank.  So I said $ 80 but I,m sure it would have been more like a $100 had they let me fill it up.  They don't care!  There were so many trucks and truckers all over the place that they don't have enough cash registers to ring all the sales.  We got our Wendy's and got out of there. Still it wasted about an hour.

Our path took us right thru Saint Louis.  I70 to I270 to I 55.  But the bottleneck was on 270.  From listening to the CB radio, the story was that someone had a ladder fly off his pickup, and it hit a car causing it to lose control.  That caused a big semi to jacknife across the road while about a dozen other cars plowed into the entire mess.

We sat on 270 in one place with hardly no progress for an hour and a half.  We crept along slower than you could have walked it.  Trucks and cars bumper to bumper, and all the nut cases were changing lanes in front of the semi that could barely stop, and emergency vehicles forced their way thru the lanes causing even more accidents. 

The reports coming from truckers in the other lane said that it was completely gone as they had loaded the semi and cars on wreckers, but by then it was over ten miles of stopped folks on the road.  We were in the center lane, and it was five lanes to cross to get to an exit.  But worse, where would we have gone with the big motor home if we had exited.  Down thru small city streets and residential neighborhoods that we don't know our way around in.  Nooo I don't think so!  So we just had to wait it out.

We rolled over where the accident had been, based on the sand on the road and all the broken glass, but the tie up didn't get any better, as there were so many cars that you couldn't speed up because the car in front couldn't speed up.

We finally arrived here in Sikeston, Mo around 8 PM.  By that time it had began to pour rain.  It rained for the last thirty miles.  I had called ahead to explain that we would be late on our reservation but they said they would wait.  It was dark as we arrived, and we were led to the site by a golf cart with no headlights.

I did get the water and power hooked up but not the sewer, as it continues to rain.  We can see the intersection of the interstate out the front window but it is about a block away.  Our site is just gravel, so I have no idea what the campground is like.  But hey, the hookups work, and after 400 miles and a large city traffic jam, what else would I want but hookups and the dark of night?

Incidentally this is the home of Lambert's restaurant that is featured on the travel channel as the home of "Throwed Rolls."  They had signs on the way in here claiming they have tossed 13 million rolls.  Now that has to be a bit of a stretch, but then who's doing the countin?

Obviously we were a tad late to go for a nice sit down dinner.  I went and bought some cold sandwiches at Subway.

Perhaps tomorrow will not be as big of a bottleneck, as we head down thru rural Tennessee and Mississippi.  Red Bay, Alabama is right on the state line with Ms.

Later!  Retired Rod