Friday 4/13
Day 1 - Marion IA to West Memphis AR (approx 575 miles)
Vacation starts today! After the stresses of the last two weeks, it is such a relief to finally be able to start - and we are grateful that we get to go.
We went to bed late last night and then laid awake thinking of all the stuff we needed to take. This turned out to be a good thing, because otherwise Dick would have forgotten all of his dress pants for the cruise - which would have meant him having to wear his suit pants every evening or me wearing my dresses to the Lido restaurant.
Here's the trunk full of suitcases:

When we left Marion it was 46 degrees and rainy. We stopped at the hospital in Iowa City to see Dick's dad, then headed south. Our original plan was to stop in St Louis and go to the zoo, but it was 48 degrees and rainy there also, and in the 70s in Memphis, so we decided to skip the zoo and just keep going. Turns out the traffic in St Louis was enough of a "zoo", but the "animals" weren't as cute...
Dick suggested that I take pictures of the "welcome to (insert state name here)" signs on our trip. This was a fail both times today. Tomorrow I think I will have him stop the car so I can get out and take a picture. Then I will just look like a dork instead of being a fail. (Can you tell I think this is a lame idea?)
An observation: the address of our motel was on S Service Rd, which the Garmin and AAA maps translated as W Service Rd. Turns out it was actually E Service Rd. When the Garmin starts saying "As soon as possible make a u-turn" over and over it's time to turn it off.
Spending the night in West Memphis. Tomorrow we head to New Orleans.