2 RV's, 1 heading to Ocala, 1 heading to Nokomis (Thursday)

... spending the night at Mason City IA

For no reason, we pull out at 7:30 AM as usual.

The shortest route is to stay on the back roads until we get to I-64 west of St Louis. I am glad I stayed on the freeway with the truck. The first part of this route was narrow lanes with -0- shoulder beyond the white line. Past the while line was either up or down, it was not a flat or straight road. Then it was four lane for a short ways and then back to narrow, curves and hills.

But it keeps us out of STL and we are heading home via four lane the rest of the way. Well, not home, but back to IA.

1st stop is the Loves near New London. Fuel and rest room, BB had wanted to stop at the rest area but I had seen it was closed when we past it on the way down.

Going through Hannibal I had noticed that the former Holiday Inn had been repainted. So on the way back I looked closer and they have one little ground level sign that says 'Hannibal Inn.' That is the same name they have been using for the last couple of years. I did see a couple of cars in the lot but the last reviews have not been good.

2nd stop is in Iowa City at the Firehouse Sandwich place. This time we ordered ahead. In SLC we walked out of one because so many people were sitting waiting. In Brainerd we waited a long, long time so this time we planned ahead. Good food, and it was ready when we got there.

There was nothing good or much new on the load board today. Finally sometime after eating we see a truck near KC coming to Des Moines. That would have worked if we had seen it two hours earlier. But the math didn't work when we would now have to add four hours wasted plus the out of route hours to get to it.

Roads are all clear today, we sail through Cedar Rapids at the posted instead of at 10 mph.

I thought we would make it all the way back without stopping at any of the same places, but BB needed a rest room before we would get to the hotel.

3rd stop was Loves in Floyd. It is now 12 degrees, we would have preferred heading south. Another 25 miles to go.

4th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Mason City. We hope there are no issues. One of our co-drivers posted on FB a few weeks ago of getting bed bug bites at this hotel. We have stayed here before and never had issues and the hotels in Clear Lake were either more money or lesser hotels.

The first thing we notice is that most of the cars are still covered in snow. The snow was yesterday morning.

(the office closes at 5 PM) At 4:45, IA starts putting trips on the load board including FL. BB and I do not agree right away which ones to take. And then I haven't called IA for a while so I have to type in more of there phone number than I could have.

Our first choice is gone. Then I have to convince BB that trip is gone, while I have someone on the other end of the phone. OK, we will take two other FL trips. We are heading to FL ! !

BB will drop 160 miles before I do. That is further apart than we like to drop but it is the best we could do this time.

Load board

US - 301

IA - 90/88

MN - 5

WI - 8

NC - 5

There had been a trip from NC to KC earlier in the day but gone by the time the FL orders showed up for us. There had been two FL trips overnight going to the same place but ... I am not sure what we were waiting for ... and then they were gone. Lots of trips heading west but the weather is bad out west, all over the west.

It looks like we are taking the same highway back down to St Louis as we just traveled.