On the road: St Louis to St. Joseph, MO


A very long day.

Distance: ~300 miles


I needed to work another half-day today, so we had yet another car shuffle. We had initially meant to leave tomorrow, but with the packers done, we thought we could make it to Kansas City if we left after lunch. I took Nina to day care, got the car back to Arne, and dropped myself off at work.
Arne packs up, goes to REI for sleeping bags, gets the Subraru washed, hooks up the trailer, drops off all our last mail at the postoffice and then picked me up. I thought I was all done after leaving my keys with office mate Jenn, but I also needed to drop off my parking pass at North campus, pick up some software, and then I got a call that my last paycheck was in my mailbox, so we had to go back to campus. picks up last check, and we’re finally off, except that we still hadn't had lunch, so our first stop was Hardee's (which was to the East, going completely the wrong way!)

When we finally get on the road, the molding around the windsheild flies off, and we had to stop in Columbia to find a dealer to glue back on for us. Nina was great at napping for the first hour or so, but when she woke up, she was not happy to be on a road trip. I ended up moving to the back seat to help with entertainment. We tried drawing on a whiteboard, singing songs, playing with every toy we had in the car, and she still wasn't happy to be strapped in to her seat.

We stopped at a real hometown place called the Bayleaf Cafe, in Higginsville, MO for dinner. We spotted a good playground when we were driving to it, so we stopped and played in playground for an hour before getting back on the road. That really helped Nina to get some of her wiggles out.

We drove through Kansas City (really around it) and then made it all the way to St. Joseph before we called it quits. We found a Holiday Inn downtown to stay at. The neighborhood wasn't very good and the parking area was quite scary, but we were done driving! I managed to drive down a loading dock one-way and got to practice backing up with the trailer. (Thanks to Arne’s direction we got out).

Nina didn't sleep at all until we got in the room (~10pm). A very long day.


Posted: Fri - July 27, 2007 at 11:10 AM          

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