Go West!

We are heading west. We love our road trips but, as each trip approaches its end, we are ready to get home and resume our normal schedules and just be home for a while. However, we have tons of craft shows to do during the remainder of the year so we will be in and out of town quite a bit. Not to mention that Sandy has more than ten custom stuffed animal orders that need to be sewn as soon as we get home. (If you aren't aware, Sandy sews unicorns and teddy bears and they are adorable. They are $25.00 each.😊💰)

So we have a lot to do this year. And, it won't be long before the traveling bug will be biting at us and we will start planning and saving for another trip, even if it doesn't happen for a few years.

After we left Massachusetts we drove through Rhode Island and Connecticut. We have some Grant ancestors (our dad's mother was a Grant) who settled in Connecticut. Matthew Grant left England and landed in Massachusetts around 1630, but, within just a few years, he moved to Connecticut and the Grants were there for several generations. Matthew died in Windsor, Connecticut. His posterity included Heber J. Grant and Ulysses S. Grant so we get to be cousins to these men -- or they get to be cousins to us, depending on how you want to look at it 😀. We drove through a couple of the Connecticut towns where some Grant relatives lived and recorded it for our YouTube channel.

One of the towns we randomly drove through was Avon, Connecticut, a suburb of Hartford. It was a very quaint town of about 18,000 people. We really liked how all of the businesses, whether it was fast food or a doctor's office, coordinated with each other and reflected the history and charm of the area.

Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Connecticut

Pennsylvania

Our drive from Massachusetts ended in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where we stayed the night. The next day we drove to Columbus, Ohio, and stayed the night there. Even though we are headed to the west coast and home, we still had a couple of more stops on our itinerary. After we left Columbus, we headed to St. Louis, Missouri, where we stayed a couple of days because we had tickets to a Chicago Cubs/St. Louis Cardinals game. We are huge baseball fans and the Chicago Cubs are one of our favorite teams. As it turned out, the Cubs and Cardinals were playing each other in a three-day series at the time we would be driving through so it seemed like a no-brainer to spend an extra day there and see a game.

Since we don't know the St. Louis area, and driving to and from a MLB game and parking can be a headache, we opted to reserve a room at a downtown Hampton Inn that was only about 1/2 a mile from the ballpark so that we could walk to and from the game. We are so glad that we did; it was one of the better decisions we've made in a while.

We arrived the day before the game and the hotel was packed full of Cardinals and Cubs fans -- and when we say packed we mean that this hotel has 17 floors (minus a 13th floor, of course) and it was booked solid. We had to wait in line for one of the three elevators to take us to our floor. But we have to give the staff at this hotel a lot of kudos because they easily managed and organized the chaos, got everyone checked in, and, after the initial elevator congestion, everything ran smoothly for the rest of our stay. We have stayed at a lot of hotels in our lives and had excellent service from many of them, but this Hampton Inn surpassed all of our previous experiences. The staff were more than friendly and efficient; they felt like old friends by the time we left there. Rico, the security guy, and LaShonda, our housekeeper, were the best. The excellent service would be a big deal even for a smaller hotel, but the fact that we could come out of that congestion and chaos feeling like we were unique and special to these people says a lot about the hotel management and personnel.

To add to that experience, our room was on the 17th floor (the top) and our view was spectacular. The Gateway Arch was right out our window. We could have walked to the Arch from our hotel; unfortunately, we didn't have a ton of extra time so we didn't get over there. But if you are ever in downtown St. Louis, we can highly recommend the Hampton Inn Downtown Gateway Arch hotel.

Unfortunately, after sitting in the midday sun, heat, and humidity for four hours (can you say sunburned?), the Cubs lost to the Cardinals.😡 But we had great seats behind the Cubs dugout and we have now visited Busch Stadium in St. Louis so we can cross that off our bucket list.

View from our hotel window on the 17th floor

 

Our next stop was Kansas City, Missouri, where we toured the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. We have actually been to the Truman Library before, but we didn't have our Presidential Library Passport books yet so we had to go a second time to get them stamped. The Truman Library is one of the better libraries to tour. There is so much to see there.

Replica of the Liberty Bell

The Truman home

And a little Missouri scenery (it's FLAT):

We are only a few days from returning home. We are ready to get home but so grateful for this trip. We have visited and seen so many sights and met some wonderful people whom we will never forget.