Day Seven - Maryville, MO to El Dorado Springs, MO

Today was a short day of driving - milage wise. Time wise....... well, it took a little longer than we thought it would. Dad decided to rotate the tires on the car while he had them off to work on the brakes last night, and the car picked up an odd vibration in the right front. Probably due to being out of balance, and wearing itself down in a funny pattern to match the rear wheel position it used to be in. We stopped at a Sears in Kansas City, since the tires were originally from Sears (small chance that they would have done it for free - but no such luck) and asked them to balance the tires - make sure everything was as even as it could be.

After spending an hour catching up on phone calls while sitting on the floor of the service center - propped up between a couple stacks of tires... we were back on the road and looking for dinner. A call to my older cousin filled us in on the important info, "Get food before this one particular town - nothing's good past that." Ok, food it is. We found a A&W / Long John Silver combo, and had baby corn dogs, coleslaw, fries, popcorn shrimp and fish (talk about a balanced meal!)

Back in the car after dinner, a quick glance at the map brought a good round of laughs. We could go back to the interstate, and head south to my cousin's - or we could take a small detour, and drive through Peculiar, MO. (I'm kicking myself here, because I had about 5 pictures of the road signs for Peculiar... and the camera ate them.... all of them... :-( ) On the way, we passed Hwy YY, and the junction between Hwy OO and Hwy ZZ. (together, it looked like OOZZ - or Oz! which we've been seeing LOTS of the last three days!) Yes, for you fearless west-coasters out there, the way most of the midwest ID's their state highways - at a certain point, you start gettting letter designations and double letter designations, instead of just numbers. It makes for some interesting street signs!

The rest of the drive was uneventful, until we actually reached the house - where three kids (7, 4, and 20 mos) and a dog were waiting with enthusiastic and sloppy kisses! We spent the rest of the evening reading bedtime stories, catching up on life with my cousin and her husband, relaxing, and finally passing out.

The cheerful patter of little feet greeted us the next morning, as none of my young cousins will walk when running works even better! Dad managed to make it through the whole day as part storybook reader, part human jungle gym, and part playmate to Josh, the four year old. I freely admit that I didn't make it - I took a nice long nap about 2pm... Which was just as well - I didn't fall asleep early later on, and was on hand when Joel (the almost-two-year-old) woke up with bad dreams at 12:30 am.... and 1:15 am.... and again at 7:00 am (I was up for the day by that time) He's still at almost the right size to cuddle easily, and I loved every minute holding him! Joel's a big fan of bicycles and sharks. There's a book on sharks at their house that he asked to have read to him at least three times today! (Here, Dad is reading the shark book to Joel.

Tomorrow, we're off to a little town outside Nashville, TN, where we'll catch up with some old friends of both Dad & I from junior high and high school days. Then it's on to Georgia and Florida!