Day 1 - St. Louis

1st leg: 522 miles.

It was in the low 60s and partly sunny when we pulled out of Eagle Ridge Court and made our way south in the direction of Chicago. Our car was packed with all sorts of provisions to get us through the next 16 days and some 3,800 miles of our roadtrip. Leaving Grand Rapids we made our way down familiar highways, heading west on I-80 around the southern edge of Chicago as we joined with hundreds of thousands travelers making their own pilgrimages on the road.

Eventually we turned back south again, this time on I-55. We stopped for a picnic punch at a gas station and mini mart just off the interstate at Coal City. After lunch and refilling the gas tank we switched places and Susie drove for the next hour or so. We pulled off at Funk's Grove rest area where learned that much of I-55 tracked along the old US-66 -- a selling point for some of the small communities along the highway trying to make a buck or two to stay afloat -- but otherwise we saw little sign of the old highway.

About 40 miles short of the Mississippi River and Saint Louis we pulled left I-55 at Staunton, Illinois. Making our way through the village we found the road to Bunker Hill, an even smaller village that was once the home of the Soper clan in Illinois.

My great-great father Jedediah and his wife Isabelle left Plainfield, NJ sometime in the late 1850s and made their way to this part of the Illinois prairie where he worked as a carpenter and they raised a small brood of children. One of his sons was Jonas who would eventually have a son Jesse ("J" names ran in the family for a short while), who in turn had a son Donald, my father.

Anyway, we took a short detour from our trip to track down their graves.

While we found the cemetery with little difficulty we were unable to locate the graves of either the gr-gr-parents or several of their young children. But it was a beautiful day to wander among the old stones and pay our respects to the men from this village who served in the civil war (no Soper among them).

We soon returned to I-55 and zipped right down to I-270 and across the Big Muddy into Missouri. Traffic moved well even though it was rush hour and after one or two slow moments we were soon pulling into the driveway of the Loaney home in Ballwin (or Manchester, take your pick). After lots of hugs we spent a wonderful evening of good food and lively conversation.

Tomorrow will be not only our big day seeing the sights of St. Louis -- for the first time -- but our first truly serious day of exploring on this road trip. . . The Arch beckons!

Stay tuned!