Okay, so I'll warn you now that this one is going to be fairly short becuase its almost 10:00 at night and I'm exhausted after a long day of driving and exploring America. Okay, honestly, not so much exploring as watching it pass by the window.
The day started out brilliantly as we found ourselves waking up in lovely Greenville, Indiana. At breakfast, enjoyed at the wonderful Super 8, my family gave me cards and made me feel like the luckiest Dad in the world! And it was only 8:30 in the morning! I was then given the best gift ever - I was granted the power to choose the restaraunts and movies for the day!!!! Its good to be the king;
We then piled into Vannikan Roadwalker and headed West!!! We kept going and going and going - passing St. Louis (we crossed the Mississippi), we saw the grasslands, we visited Indiana (briefly) and then we found ourselves in Missouri and hungry! Since I was in charge, I started looking for Bar-b-que because I was in the mood for meat! And then outside of Lebanon, MO I saw the signs for this place;
And when I also saw the billboards advertising "Kids Eat Free" and I knew where we were going - hey we're eating away for 74 days so we have to keep the budget down! Bottom line ended up being we ALL had a great lunch, there was free ice cream for desert and we were good to go! The only low point was when Sarah was standing outside eating her ice cream and she was dive bombed by a kamikaze bug. That poor bug gave its life for a moment of creamy heaven. It was so funny it almost made Sarah shoot ice cream out her nose that would have been the best Father's Day present ever!
And then the day started to go South (so to speak) as our air condition decided to stop working just outside of Springfield, MO! We managed to keep going with the windows open for another 764 miles before we finally decided we had to stop for the night. To get a perspective, it looked like this;
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It was hot, it was disgusting and we had deadened derrieres by the time we finished! It felt like a rolling Swedish Sauna at times and the wind was unbelievable.
But through it all the kids were great and never complained in the least. And that was truly the best Father's Day Present of all! But there was more presents for today! My children (and my beautiful, loving wife Amy) had conspired to buy me a t-shirt from Dickey's and they presented it to me at dinner tonight and what does it say? - Hardcore Carnivore! And all I can say is, "Yes, yes I am".
And now its late at night, things are getting blurry and tomorrow I have to go out in search of a mechanic in Clinton who can fix our air conditioner and hopefully get us back out on the road by noon. Ahhhhh, the life of the travler. But it was a great Father's Day!
And on yet a separate note, we have the first to add to our list of what Sarah has dubbed "Random Refuse". This is all the bizarre things we see on the side of the road that we would collect if we had room for it in the van. We're not talking your every day items such as cans, bottles or other recyclable items. These are the things that you really can't believe someone just abandoned on the side of the road. Today as we pulled out of Greenville we saw a pontoon boat on a trailer abandomed on the side of the road - actually it was in the middle of the entrance circle as we were pulling on to the highway. Then later in the day we saw another boat on a trailer abandoned by the side of the road. So, the Random Refuse Count thus far is two boats on trailers. We've decided that we're going to save the "Flattened Fauna Report" for the actual ride back, in the car there were just to many to see and they're sometimes too difficult to identify at 70 miles an hour.
Stay well and you'll be hearing more from the road!
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