Thanks for the welcome!
I live west of Springfield,IL. But my wife & I drive down to St. Louis once or twice a month for shopping, a good meal, or whatever. We consider it our "home city". Chicago's great, and we visit whenever we get the chance. But it's about a 3 hour boring I-55 drive from here, so it's a more planned kind of trip. St. Louis is about a 90 minute drive (if we go the direct way), and we'll do that on just some random Saturday.
But we love to take the long way to St. Louis and zip down through the river valley roads by the Illinois, Mississippi, & Missouri rivers. Do the ferries over by Grafton, Kampsville, IL. Quite good backwoods roads around there. In fact, just last weekend I needed to see how the Z really handles. So we did a loop out on Highway 94 from Hermann back in to St. Louis. Picked up a case of wine and hit the twisties. Such a great road when not packed with winos, like a mini Tail-of-The-Dragon but at a legal 55mph.
The Z was in its element.
But yeah, if there's ever a St. Louis meetup or cruise somewhere and it's on a weekend when I'm free, it'd be fun to meet a few "locals"!
Here's the baby...