– Little Rock, Arkansas to Columbus, Ohio –

So… I’m writing this post from the car. It’s after 9pm and we are still on the road. Today has been a long day, and including the time change into the Eastern time zone, we’ve really ended up driving rather late.

Our trip today was from Little Rock to Columbus, which already takes eleven hours. When you add to that a time change and just a few stops, you get a very long day.

We were up at 5am this morning, and on the road by 6:30. Around 6:50, we stopped at a Panera for breakfast, and then we were off. To say that today has been interesting would be a lie. For the most part, we’ve done nothing but drive down the highway.

We did get a suggestion from a family member to skip I-40 and take another route further north, which we did. The traffic and scenery on I-40 is generally awful, and this route was better, for sure. We spent more time traveling through Kentucky than we would have on I-40, and skipped the majority of Tennessee. It worked out well.

Our book got a lot of attention today, since we didn’t have anything better to do, like look at pretty scenery. We are a little more than halfway through now, which isn’t bad at all.

Just after our regular lunch time (which felt pretty late since breakfast was so early), we stopped at a little cafe in Grand Rivers for lunch. Everyone had sandwiches, with delicious bread that I have to assume was homemade, since it said “bakery” in the cafe’s name. I didn’t ask, though, so I could be wrong.

I’m sure you’ll notice that Grand Rivers, Kentucky isn’t on the highway. We made the decision to drive down a little ways and visit Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, since otherwise we wouldn’t see anything interesting at all today. I regret the trip a little now, as I’m sitting here in the car, still riding along this late, but I don’t regret it entirely.

The area is neat, and I encourage you to look at it on a map. There’s two rivers right there, as well as a dam to create Kentucky Lake, and the park is on a little island-like protrusion in the middle of it all. It was a very popular spot to be on the sunny Saturday afternoon.

We did see some sort of raptor bird’s nest on our way by, so that was pretty cool. After our little stop at the river, we switched drivers and were back on the road for several more hours of highway driving. Ripley looks really bored back there in the back seat today.

On the far side of Louisville, we stopped for dinner sometime before 7pm at a Qdoba and switched drivers again. Mark is behind the wheel as I write this, driving the last 40 or so miles to Columbus. I expect we will be there a little after 10pm. What a day.

Tomorrow is our first real attraction, with a Niagra Falls adventure (on the Canada side) for the afternoon. We will pop back over into the US to sleep tomorrow night in Buffalo, then we will be in Canada long-term starting sometime Monday. We actually have a little time to run tomorrow and nowhere near as long to drive, so I’m really looking forward to it. I might need a little nap in the car first, considering today was so long and we won’t have long to sleep tonight.

– Trip Total : 1,125 miles –