Delaware-Missouri

Landing on the mainland in Annapolis at sunrise.

We left this morning at 5:00am from Bethany Beach, and due to a storm in the south, we had to divert our course north, and headed thru the Cumberland Gap, and up to I-70 through West Virginia.

What about a tunnel? NO! shut your mouth.

It was distinctively American that the entrance to the Rustbelt that we drove through from Cumberland, MD to Dayton, OH was marked by a chunk of mountain that was blown up in order to make the "pass". Thereafter, ALL of the drivers were ridiculously polite, moved to the right, and maintained an understandable speed somewhere between 70 and 80. An unheard of feat not reproduced anywhere within 100 miles of I-95.

That's all I have to say about that.

 West Virginia was actually much prettier than any of us would have thought, and as the Appalachian Mountains faded out into the eastern plains, the monotony of the rest of the drive began to ware on us. Luckily, we managed to scoot through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois without any snow, and arrived in St. Louis at 8:30, 3 and a half hours ahead of schedule. The best treat of the evening was the one hour prize we got back in time when we crossed into Illinois and entered central time zone.

View from the hotel lobby. Victory.

Tomorrow we go out and explore the city of St. Louis.... Meaning the arch. We got here just in time to be snowed into our very nice downtown hotel, complete with restaurant, pool, gym, and hot tub. It appears that St. Louis style pizza is a super flat crust made with mozzarella and provolone. They seem to be obsessed with provolone cheese here in general. More on that later.