Day 5 - Recap

Currently sitting in a lovely room in St. Louis, Missouri! But, more about that will come later!

- Left Wichita around 7:30 AM.

- Got gas two times.

- Drove a total of 465 miles.

- Took 6 different freeways/highways (including one turnpike!)

- Drove in Kansas and Missouri.

- As I posted earlier today, the weather was very, very, very cold. Normally, the days have started out a little cold, and then would warm up a tad. Today, it pretty much stayed in the high 40's, low 50's the whole time. It wasn't as windy as it's been in the past (or maybe it was, and I'm just used to it now?), but we did get more rain than we've had. It sprinkled a bit earlier in the day and then stopped, but the last hour-ish of our ride today, it rained constantly. Nothing super hard, but it was always there. Saw a little bit of lightening, too.

- Stopped for breakfast at McDonald's (not a fan of McDonald's in general, but they know how to do breakfast!).. Grossed out by the fact that this McDonald's doesn't just have a hamburger with two patties, but you can get a Filet-oh-Fish sandwich with TWO fish patties.. It was just... Ew.

- Crossed into Missouri, and saw a field with a mama goat and like, 10 baby goats. And the babies were chasing the mom around. It was sooooo adorable! I want one!

- Made it to Roach, Missouri, and got to see John, Amanda, and Mike! We know them from our church back home.. John and Amanda are students at missionary training center there. They're training to be able to go and be missionaries somewhere, anywhere that God calls them (learning linguistics and skills that they'll need in the missions field). It's pretty cool. Mike was visiting them on Spring Break, and he's at the Bible school associated with the training center in Wisconsin. Amanda and Mike made us grilled cheese sandwiches and soup, that was perfect after freezing on the bike! Then they gave us a tour of their campus there. It's pretty incredible.

- Left there and headed to St. Louis. Got there around 6:30. The ride was just full of rain, rain, and some more rain.

- It was also on this leg of the trek that dad and I both decided that we're pretty much over the iPod playlist I'd created originally. Apparently the 189 in the playlist have played through a few times already..

- I was soooo excited when we got to St. Louis and I saw the St. Louis arch! When I was in 3rd and 4th grade, I had this amazing teacher who loved to get us excited about we were learning about and had us do awesome projects. In 4th grade, we built a life-sized covered wagon and then re-enacted what the original settlers had to do. In 3rd grade, we created a miniature replica of the St. Louis arch. We spent months learning about Lewis and Clark, and throughout the whole time, we were cutting and sanding wood, taping and gluing triangles together, attaching them to make them look like the arch, and then used paper mache and a lot of paint to make it look identical. That was 11 years ago, and I finally got to see it in person!

- Tried to get a room at one hotel, and they were booked. So we ended up getting a room at the Drury Hotel. Super, super nice employees! And we have a really nice room.

- Apparently, there's a Robot convention in town (we're staying in downtown St. Louis, right next to the convention center and stadium), and this convention is geared towards younger people, so there's ton of high schoolers running around everywhere. My dad and I were joking that we should run around our hotel tonight and remove duct tape from their doors (hahha, if you've ever been on one of the Washington DC trips or band trips, you know what that means!).. But we decided to behave... So far.

- For dinner we walked a few blocks down the street and ended up at this Oyster Bar. I had an amaaaazing Cajun Crawfish Bisque, and my dad had a plate with a bunch of stuff (Jumbalaya, cajun shrimp.. at least that's what it looked like) and his was good too.

- Walked around afterwards looking for something sweet.. But apparently, downtown St. Louis pretty much shuts down at 5 once all of the corporate offices close..

- While walking around, we saw two restaurants that we have in California, but they have different names. One is Hardee's - it's Carl's Jr, just with a different name (same logo and menu and everything). I already knew about this, so it didn't shock me. HOWEVER, they have a place called Saint Louis Bread. In California (and everywhere else, I think), we call this Panera Bread. Yeah, Panera has a whole different name. I don't know why Saint Louis thinks they're special enough to rename this delicious place.. But they did. Same logo, same appearance inside the restaurant.. I don't get it!

- Made it back to the hotel in one piece (walking around downtown St. Louis by yourself wouldn't not be smiled upon).

Tomorrow, we're heading to Indiana! Going to stop for a few hours to see my Aunt Linda (my dad's sister) and her family! Haven't seen them in forever, so it will be awesome! Then, we'll head on to Winona Lake, Indiana, where we'll camp out for a few days while my dad has a meeting. 

Weather tomorrow probably isn't going to be any better than today. The weather was tolerable once we got on all of our real/electric warm gear. The main thing we don't want at this point is lightening. Lightening will probably make us pull over and stop until it clears up. *hint, hint, on a prayer request :)* My grandma keeps taunting me with tales of 80 degree weather waiting for us in Ohio. Tuesday! I hope it's still there on Tuesday!

Thanks to John, Amanda, and Luke for letting us hang out for a few hours today and for feeding us! :)

It's been a long day, and we're planning on getting out of here around 8ish tomorrow morning. Dad's already snoring, so I think I am going to head to bed, too!

- Kelsey

Posted via email from Adventures of a Family on a Motorcycle