Wednesday, July 15th
It was still lightly raining when we woke up on Wednesday morning. We packed our gear and headed to the campground building for an “all you can eat” pancake breakfast. The only other patrons there were three older couples from the RV crowd. I think the staff knew them all from previous visits, so I felt a bit out of place as an unknown less-than-60-something.
The rain seemed to be clearing out as we got ready to hit the road for a full day of interstate mile-busting. We could see the back edge of the rain clouds ahead of us as we started, and I think we followed them all the way across Kansas. The clouds were starting to break up as we went through Kansas City and entered Missouri.
We rolled on across Missouri, which was thankfully not as flat or as wide as Kansas. Our target for the evening was the KOA near the Six Flags St Louis. We got off I-70 about 40 miles west of St. Louis to head south and pick up I-44. The KOA was actually in Pacific, MO, off of I-44. The road we followed turned out to be a nice twisty country road, which was a welcome relief after most of a day on interstate slab. I suspect that if we had the luxury of enough time to ride across the country on back roads, we could enjoy most of our miles of riding a lot more!
The guy working the counter at the KOA was a nice guy, and we had quite a conversation about his bike troubles and his work with the families of war vets. We were about to supply ourselves with supper from the campground store (hotdogs, a can of beans, etc) when he suggested pizza. That worked for us, so we got the number and called Domino’s!
Later that evening one of the camp staff came by on a golf cart and told us the Coleman rep was there passing out freebies, so we went up and picked up a handful. Some poor guy got the job of parading around in a mascot suit as a can of bug repellent. It was over 90 degrees, so I know he was suffering in there!
We sought shelter from the bugs in our tarp as the sun went down, and watched a couple of young girls in sundresses hiding from somebody as they texted and giggled and fed the mosquitoes before returning to their campsite. I’m sure they were covered in bug bites!
| Mileage | |
| Today | 550.4 |
| Trip Total | 4,270.3 |
