
The van did a heroic job of just chugging along steadily through it all.
I did less well, as I seem to have caught the deep lung cold that Jet's been recovering from for the whole first week of his vacation. Poor kid. I, sadly, have caught the same thing, and John brought the Zicam zinc tablets for me and I've been taking them religiously every three hours. On top of that I took a Dayquil and everything dried up. So I was chugging liquids all day, trying to stay away from sweetened things, and mostly drinking hot water from coffee maker taps.

It was worth it to have the extra time to take a little more roundabout route through St. Louis to get a good shot of the arch there. *laughs* We've been in the arch, in a very 60's style pearl necklace of tiny capsules that move up inside the arch to the view ports at the top.

It happened to be a BBQ place that showed up on our GPS, and we pulled over not knowing what to expect, but it was absolutely excellent BBQ. We each got a sandwich, John got pulled pork and I got a lovely chicken breast, that were both smoked to tender perfection and topped with slaw and put in a soft white bun. John got crispy okra and pinto beans as sides while I had their "crispy potatoes" and their lovely banana pudding for dessert.

The okra were equally crisp. The sandwiches were both really good and they had a variety of sauces, some of which I'd had before, the ooie gooey Tennessee sauce, the Mustard sauce, the vinegar based Carolinas sauce, and even a Hot Lips Habanero based sauce were like things I've tried before. They had a Clear sauce that was also hot but which I didn't like so much, and a Red sauce that I'd never seen the like of before. It was tangy, a little pepper hot, sweet, and thin and was absolutely amazing on my smoked chicken. I ended up buying a bottle of it to bring home.
The banana pudding was the cherry on top, lovely, creamy, with plenty of big sweet chunks of banana and crunchy Vanilla Wafers throughout. It was so good.

The traffic was flowing again and John got us out of the city proper before turning it over to me on the Georgia border information stop where we took this picture. From there I took the van into Atlanta and through it to the far side so that we could start in the morning counter to the commute. We pulled in at 10 pm, loosened the bass's strings as Mr. Legg asked, pulled all the more delicate instruments indoors with us, and finally got good showers.
I also took more pills, drank a lot more liquids, and hopefully I'll sleep well tonight. Nyquil usually does a good job on me, and keeps it so that I can breathe and not snore too much. *laughs*
I think we'll make it before 3pm tomorrow, which is when the kids are supposed to get to the hotel and will need to bring their instruments into their hotel rooms. It's kind of crazy thinking that yesterday we started in Denver at 5° F and are now sitting in a balmy 40° in Atlanta, which has all the local shivering and in down. It seems amazingly warm to us now. *laughs*
Good night.