Man it feels good to hit the road. Like a weight has been lifted.
Our first big target is Badlands National Park but, given that we left on a Friday afternoon, we were aiming to make it outside of Kansas City, MO which is a drive of 550 miles. So, we loaded the cooler full of ice, food and drinks for the next few days and set off to make it as far as we could. Nothing terribly eventful happened except for a really killer storm across St. Louis. It was odd because, as we were crossing the suspension bridge right downtown, the sky above the city was split in half, right down the middle. One side a firey orange haze, lit by the sun, but not a drop of rain, and the other side raining to the point of near-zero visibility.
The firey side
The only snag we hit, if you can even call it that, was something called "Show-Me Fest" or some nonsense causing all the hotels in Columbia, MO to be booked up or outrageously expensive. Columbia was where we had planned to stop, but instead we put on our "Girl in the Ice" audio book and took our sweet asses on down the road to the Econo Lodge right outside of KC. The ride was long and we were pretty worn out by the time we got there, but the van rides so well it really wasnt that bad.
Tomorrow its the Badlands!