Road Trip Day 15

We managed to escape further storms overnight, but stuff was still very wet: beds, towels, bathing suits from swimming in Nashville on Friday.... we needed to dry out and the weather wasn't cooperating. We all woke up grumpy on Sunday morning. Things didn't improve when Layla and I went to take showers. The shower heads just sprayed everywhere. There was no way to turn them on or adjust them at all without getting totally soaked. And so my pajamas and my Birkenstocks were drenched before I even got in. I also had to stand the entire time on my tip toes to keep from getting fully sprayed in the face the whole time. It did not improve my mood.We did, however, get torn down and loaded up earlier than planned!! We wanted to leave by 9, since we were going to church in the city at 10, and knew we would have to find street parking that would accommodate our van and trailer. We pulled out at 8:45. A true miracle. We drove in and immediately found parking. We were ready at 9:05. And then we discovered that church didn't actually start until 10:15. So we decided to walk around a little and see some of the cool buildings and other old churches in the neighborhood.

When we finally went to church, it was awesome. We had done a little research before the trip. Since we were going to be finding ourselves in St. Louis on a Sunday, I wanted to find a super old, super traditional Lutheran church to attend. This one, Historic Trinity Lutheran Church in Soulard, fit the bill. A bonus was the massive pipe organ.

Everyone was very friendly, and worshiping there was a great way to re-start our day. Our after-church, pre-departure plan was to visit Grant's Farm to see the Clydesdales. It was stiflingly hot, but we had a good time. You have to pay for parking, but otherwise it's free. It is a large piece of land that, at one time, belonged to President Ulysses S. Grant, but now belongs to the Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch) and is used as a zoo/farm/sanctuary for many animals, including several of the famous Budweiser Clydesdales.

We had some snow cones to cool down and wandered the gift shop before hitting the road. From there we drove to Kansas City where we set up camp and discovered the door of the refrigerator in the trailer had popped open at some point during the day and all of our food was warmish. So after sending most of our food to the dumpster, Dave left to go get some new groceries and pick up some BBQ for dinner, the kids went to the pool, and I hit the laundry facilities. By the time we went to bed, we had washed 8 loads of clothes, towels, bedding, bathing suits, and Dave's sweaty cycling stuff. We filled the washers and dryers, plus hung stuff outside and inside the trailer to dry.

 

So happy to have ALL the clothes clean and the towels all dry and no nasty bathing suits. Also, dry beds! License plate stats: still looking for Delaware and Hawaii; 6 provinces.States visited: 16.

Road Trip Day 14

Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel room and loaded everything back in the van and got hooked up. Apparently, our trailer left a dent in the parking lot. Not sure what that was about.

  

We had breakfast at Starbucks and then drove to our campground just outside of St. Louis, in Granite City, Illinois. We got things set up just as a storm was rolling in. We decided to hope that the storm had already been through St. Louis, so we headed into the city. The drive there was a little sketchy and we had to pull over a couple of times because it was raining so hard we couldn't see.

But, when we got there, it seemed to be done raining and we were able to park and do some sight seeing. We went to visit the Arch.

We weren't able to go up in it because it was sold out for the day, but we went downstairs to check out the free museum. It was really awesome. Lots of interesting displays and information about the history of the area. Layla did some conditioning and Micah paddled a canoe and got run over by a train.

At that point, we decided to leave because we were pretty hungry. When we got upstairs, the lobby was packed and nobody was able to leave because of another storm.

We were under a severe thunderstorm warning, so we were stuck there for about another 45 minutes, starving and freezing because of the air conditioning. We finally were able to leave and we went to Walmart to buy some stuff for dinner. When we got back to our campground, we discovered that the whole place was filled with huge puddles from all the rain and the corners of both of the beds in our trailers were very wet. It continued to rain off and on all evening, and by the time we wanted to go to bed, we decided to all pile in the van and drive to the bathrooms to brush our teeth.License plate stats: STILL 48 states and 6 provinces. States visited: 15.

Road Trip Day 13

This post will catch us up! Yesterday was a full, fun day. We packed up our stuff and cleaned out the trailer (highly necessary after 2 full days in a "primitive" campground with lots of dirt. We drove to Nashville, where we checked into a HOTEL!!! We unloaded our car and brought our cooler inside so we could get everything into the fridge. We also had some lunch. Sort of. We had limited options since all of our non-refrigerated food was in the trailer, which we were not going to open up in the hotel parking lot. So we had some deli meat and sliced cheese, carrots and apples. There was a microwave, so Dave decided to warm up a sausage for himself and some bacon for Micah. However, we didn't have any plates or paper towels or anything, so he improvised with a glass.

Then we drove into town to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame.

It was fun and interesting to see all the things, but again, not worth the cost. We walked around saw a little bit of the sights in town, but it was like 100* outside, so we went back to the hotel to swim instead.

We had some pizza for dinner and then enjoyed a real shower! The kids then stayed at the hotel watching a Harry Potter marathon on tv and Dave and I ubered back into town to see what was up. We started at a place called Layla's where we saw a great band that played a lot of old school country. They even played some John Denver for me that totally made my night.

When we got back (at like 11), everyone was still awake watching Harry Potter. License plate and state stats: same as yesterday.