My dad flew down (which is a miracle in itself, he does not fly) Sept 9th and we left the 10th at 5:30am for the 1300 mile trek north. We made it to Oklahoma City and were already sick of I-35 so we cut diagonally across Missouri. 
The first day we made it to Springfield Missouri, about 750miles from home. We caught a hotel where Eliza decided to take on the corner of the night stand about 11pm…the night stand won. She spent the week with a beat up nose and a nice shiner.
Day two we left Springfield, drove up through the Ozarks and stopped at Hannibal Missouri and toured Mark Twain Cave. Isaac decided that he didn’t like deep dark caverns whose crevasses once hid dead bodies and infamous bank robbers. But the girls had a blast doing the tour with grandpa. We spent a couple of hours in Hannibal and drove the last five hours as we watched the interstate turn to 4-lane,then the 4-lane turn to miles of rural two lane roads. And then we were welcomed home by the world largest fiberglass strawberry sitting outside the Strawberry Point city hall. Population:1200
Strawberry is your typical Iowa town, one gas station that does not even offer pay-at-the-pump because even if they did people would still prefer to go inside, grab their morning coffee and get the gossip update from Karen the clerk. It’s one of those places everyone has a charge account at the gas station, the grocery store and munters hardware and they will just send you a monthly bill.
To give you an idea what I mean by rural, the nearest Wal-Mart is 20 miles away (and its not a super walmart, no food and as I soon found out no eyebrow wax). The nearest movie theater with more than one screen is 40 miles away and the nearest mall is 60+ miles away. I forgot how much you drive to get anywhere.
But it was a nice relief from the concrete jungle of Houston.
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