Kevin had his first National Corn Growers board meeting in St. Louis on Friday, September 20th. So we took off the day before and headed down to St. Louis via Kansas City. It took us about about seven hours to get there, which wasn’t too bad. While Kevin was in meetings all day on Friday, I took the boys to the Chesterfield Mall in Chesterfield, MO. It was pouring rain out so we had to do something inside. They had a place called Toy Tyme Play & PARTay Room. For $5 HD could play for 90 minutes. It was a great place to waste some time!
Once Kevin got out of his meetings and we made the rounds at the office to say hi to everyone, we headed south. At that time we decided since we were so close to so many states, why not drive through as many as possible!
So that evening we headed south in Missouri, drove across the very southern tip of Illinois, the corner of Kentucky and ended up about an hour north of Memphis for the night. It was raining and dark out, so we didn’t get to see much that night.
The next morning we headed south to Memphis and from there went west into Arkansas. We ate brunch at a diner in Marianna, Arkansas and walked around their Autumn in the Park festival for a little while.
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| Autumn in the Park in Marianna, Arkansas |
From there we headed back east to Mississippi and took Highway 61 south along the river to I-20. This route didn’t take us through any major towns, but we did get to see a lot of the countryside.
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| Our first time to Mississippi |
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| Grain Sorghum field |
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| Soybean field |
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| Cotton field |
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| HD liked to look at the map and was always asking where we were at on it. |
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| AJ was a pretty good passenger for the whole trip! |
We then took I-20 west across Louisiana. We ate dinner that evening near Shreveport and then drove the rest of the way to The Villages Resort on Lake Palestine near Tyler, TX. Our destination! (Finally!)
Our condo was a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom that had a washer/dryer, full kitchen and a balcony overlooking the lake. It was really nice for the boys to have room to play when we were there.
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| Night view of our condo area |
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| Living room as we were moving in |
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| Both bedrooms had king beds and huge bathrooms |
We had a lovely view of the lake from our deck and it was the perfect place to eat breakfast every morning!
Near the lake there was a sandy area, but you couldn’t go swimming in the lake. So we just walked over for a picture and then headed back to the pool.
There were also tennis and basketball courts, playgrounds and miniature golf, which we took advantage of!
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| We had a friend from Iowa that just happened to be in Dallas for work while we were at our resort. He drove over and hung out with us one night. |
The resort was large and spread out so my only complaint was that we had to drive everywhere. And that’s kind of a pain with two kids in carseats, but we got used to it. The resort had different areas and I would definitely stay in the Presidential Harbor again!
We stayed there til the following Saturday when we began our trek home. We drove straight north to Tulsa, OK and then up to Kansas City, Kansas. Then took I-29 on home. We did make a slight detour at about 11:30 pm to drive into Nebraska which was our 12th state. We arrived home around 1:30 am. The boys (and me) had been sleeping for a few hours, so everyone was wide awake when we unloaded them! I think we were all finally in bed and asleep by 3:30 that morning.
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| Beautiful sunset somewhere in Kansas…I think! |
It was a great trip, but it sure was good to be home! If you have any specific questions about our trip or the resort, please feel free to ask them in the comments section below! I’ll be back with a few other posts about what we did in the Tyler area and where we ate! Stay tuned!
It was fun to see a glimpse into your family vacation. We went on our first official family vacation this summer and had a great time. We already have ideas for next year’s vacation!