We left St. Louis Saturday morning, after a delicious breakfast, courtesy Honey Karen and Andi, of Oatmeal pancakes, bacon, and strawberries. What a great way to start the day!
We headed across the plains of Illinois, planning on getting to Western PA by evening time. God had other plans for us though. You might remember I mentioned the big storm that hit St. Louis while we were in the City Museum? Well, that storm headed west across Illinois and into Indiana, dropping much rain in its wake. You know all the flooding in the midwest? It began with this storm.
So we make it almost to Indiana, and suddenly the traffic on I-70 is at a standstill. Not moving. At all. We finally start to creep along. 1 hour and 15 minutes later, we've traveled 3 miles and have made it to the exit where they are diverting traffic off the highway, due to water covering the road, we discovered later. So we take a detour on some small roads for 30 miles or so and get back on I-70 about 14 miles closer to Indiana.
Okay, so we're behind schedule, but it's okay, right? We're trying to get to Western PA, because the following morning, I have tickets to tour Frank Lloyd Wright's FallingWater house. I've read about Wright for years, have admired his architecture, and have, since college, dreamed of one day seeing this amazing home he designed in the Western Pennsylvania hills.
So, we're trying to make it to our hotel in Belle Vernon, PA so I can make my 10am reservation to tour the house the next morning.
We cross the border into Indiana, and just as we hit Terre Haute, traffic is stalled again. Once again, we sit for over an hour and creep along 2-3 miles. This time, when we get to the place they're diverting traffic, they road block opens up and they let us through. Yippee!! Let's burn rubber! Here's the girls at some point along this slow driving day:
Twenty miles later, we are stopped again. This time, we're the third car in line at the road block in the middle of the interstate, and as we look past the police cars blocking our way, we see several feet of water covering the highway, and a semi overturned in it. Whoa.
We sit for a while; the police send us all back, via the u-turn area, back towards Terre Haute, telling us to spend the night there. Well, we stop at the first exit we come to, and at the gas station there, a local couple tells us that we can get to Indianapolis, just not on I-70. We have to drive through this small town, take the back roads, and we can hit Hwy 40 and head east on that.
We took their advice, and soon were headed east again. However, by the time we got back on I-70 in Indianapolis, we were now 4 hours behind schedule. There was no way to get to Belle Vernon at a decent hour. So we spent the night in Columbus, OH. The next day we headed out for the Philly area. Alas, we could not get to FallingWater by 10 am. I think we passed the exit around 1:30pm. So, my dream will have to wait...perhaps another twenty years? :) At least we stayed safe, and didn't end up overturned in flood waters. Yahoo!
We got to the Philly area, a northwest suburb called Audubon, in the early eve and met our good friend Ellen Dykas for dinner. Wonder of wonders, one of our favorite restaurants, Panera Bread, was across from our hotel! SCORE! We don't have Panera here in Utah, so we were very excited to have one right by us for the week.
We had a super-dee-duper visit with Ellie D; she came back to the hotel so we could visit while the girls swam. We had hoped it would be longer than one night, but the week we came to Philly for a conference, she left Philly to go to a conference in Texas! Oh, the inhumanity of it all! But we were way happy to have the short time we had together. So good to hear what God is doing in other parts of the country and in good friends' lives!
Next post: our visits to the sights and history of Philly!
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