Back to my Homeland! St. Louis to Chicago

Woke up this morning to some wet roads, light rain, and thunder and lightning.  Shortly after arriving at the Gateway Motorsports Park, it totally started pouring!!  I had a little tiny umbrella, and I shared it with Todd from White Roof Radio to walk/run to the tents!  We both ended up getting soaked anyway!  Lol!  Since I left the track early last night, I missed the chance to be chosen for a hot lap on the track.  I'm not sure I would have been ready for that anyway, but it looked awfully cool for the people who got to do it!  I think there were 3 or 4 runs with 3 cars each time.  I went down to the far end and got some pretty cool pictures.

When we finally headed out of the park, we all got to take a lap!  It was so cool!  Of course, we couldn't go very fast…I was probably one of the few that got to go more than 50 mph before it started getting backed up to exit the field.  But it still put a huge smile on my face, so the day started pretty good!!

From there we headed off on a beautiful drive along the river!  It was really nice!  Neat little towns, fields of corn, soybeans, and maybe some rice?  Just a great drive..!  So beautiful!  

I stopped in Springfield for lunch at a Steak and Shake.  It then dawned on me that their logo resembles the MINI logo!  

After lunch, I explored Springfield a little.  It's the home of Abraham Lincoln, and I found the National Historic Site where his house was and other historic homes.  It was pretty cool…I didn't do any tours, so I didn't get inside the house, but it was still pretty neat just seeing it and walking through the neighborhood.

As I left Springfield, my Tom Tom started acting up.  It would not lock onto any satellites.  I could watch them come up, and then drop out almost immediately.  I tried resetting it, powering down, and left it running for several minutes, but it would never lock on.  Since we're getting into extreme unknown territory and large cities, I needed a GPS, so I found a Costco just out of Chicago and bought a new one, this time a Garmin.  I've had Garmin in the past and always preferred Tom Tom, but I really like this new Garmin.  It's doing a great job already!  It's first mission was to get me to the White Sox game, which it did without a hitch!  MINI bought us a patio picnic and seats for the game against the Rangers.  It was great to be at a pro ball game!  But kinda sad that the score was 7-0 Rangers by the end of the 2nd inning!  

I hadn't checked into the hotel yet, so decided to leave the game before it got too dark.  My friend Cindi flew in to join me the rest of the way to Boston, and she was already at the hotel.  When I got there, the desk clerk gave me my key and I went up to my room.  Only, it wasn't my room!  When I opened the door, I found two beds and a couple of huge suitcases open and stuff strewn about!  I told Cindi to pack light, so I was pretty sure this was not her stuff, and fortunately no one was in the room at the time to be startled by me!  The clerk at the desk apologized over and over again, and finally got me the right room!  I'm ready for bed, and an early start tomorrow from the Museum of Science and Industry!  Wish I had more time to explore Chicago, but it will have to wait for another day!