Summer 2011 Road Trip: Western US, Week 1

*Note: I am not traveling with any editing software, so all photos are straight out of the camera, either my Nikon or Eric’s iPhone.

We are officially on the road! We left home around 1:00 on Saturday afternoon, May 21, 2011.

Our first stop was Louisville, Ky., for the wedding of two of our college friends, Dayn and Laura. Dayn is also Eric’s little brother in their fraternity, and Laura was in orchestra with me. The wedding was beautiful, and we had a great time hanging out with our friends Kyle and Meghan.

After the wedding we drove on to Owensboro, Ky., to spend a few days with Eric’s family. His parents had a wonderful graduation party for him with all of his family and some close friends. We had a great time visiting with everyone. Dinner was a fantastic spread of Indian dishes, prepared by a family friend; and we are toting a good deal of the leftovers with us, despite how much stuff we already have packed in the car!

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and we are off to Kansas City, MO, to visit Melissa, my best friend from college. Looking forward to a great few days with her!

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On the way to Kansas City, we decided to stop in St. Louis, since I had never been and Eric hadn’t been in quite a few years. We saw the Gateway Arch, which was neat; and apparently early Tuesday afternoon is a good time to be there, because we got right on the tram and rode to the top! We had fun scrunching into the tiny little tram car. It was an interesting ride, because the track, as it was described, is a mixture of three types of systems: a railroad track (the cars are on rail guides), an elevator pulley system (the cars are pulled upward through the arch), and a Ferris wheel (passengers are always level with the ground). Every few seconds the car would have to tip back up a bit to correct itself. According to the tour guide, the guy who developed this system for the tram cars first drew it on the back of a bar napkin while he was drunk!

The view from the top was pretty awesome—as aerial views of cities are always awesome. We saw the courthouse, the Mississippi River, the StL Cardinals’ stadium, and Eric pointed out a striped awning on a building corner about 2 blocks away from the Arch that looked like a restaurant, which was convenient because we were getting pretty hungry. We rode back down and walked through the Museum of Westward Expansion, with all of it’s mildly creepy animatronic historic figures—I was just glad that the life-sized steer was not moving—then headed over to the restaurant we’d picked from 630 feet, grabbed some appetizers, and got back on the road to Kansas City.

 

Arch view of the StL Cardinals Stadium

 Shadow of the Arch on the Mississippi River

Let me tell you, the drive from St. Louis to Kansas City is LOOOOOONG! It was the most boring drive of the trip so far, and it seemed like we would never get there. We rolled into KC around 9pm, and my lovely BFF (yes, I still say “BFF”… I’m totally a ‘90s chick) took us out for dinner in the pouring rain!

Wednesday was quite an interesting day. Melissa had to work, so Eric and I decided to visit the National World War I Museum. This was about a week after the tornadoes tore through Joplin, Missouri, which is a few hours south of KC, and on that day KC was under a tornado watch and severe weather alert. It was still fairly nice when we left for the museum that morning, but it started to sprinkle about halfway there. Then, as soon as we pulled into the museum parking lot, we heard the tornado sirens go off. We ran into the museum, where the security guards urging everyone to come inside for shelter, and while walking toward the gift shop we saw Kristin, our friend from college who works at the museum. She gave us free tickets to the museum and showed us in to the exhibit through the storm entrance, because the front area was closed. We got to look around for about 15 minutes before the staff ushered everyone down into the basement, because the storms were moving in our direction. We sat in the basement for about 45 minutes, with free bottled water and potato chips, waiting for all the weather to pass and hoping our car full of stuff would still be there. Everything turned out fine in our area, but there was some damage just south of Kansas City.

 In the museum basement

We were finally allowed back up into the museum around 12:30, and we spent the next couple of hours looking around at the exhibit. It is quite an amazing museum, and we learned about WWI in terms of the various types of warfare—trench warfare, airplane dogfights, naval and submarine battles. Nine million soldiers died during the war, and the museum has a glass bridge at the entrance that crosses over a room filled with 9,000 poppies, one for every 1,000 lives lost in the war.

We also went up to the observation deck and up to the top of the tower and looked out over Kansas City. The stormy skies off in the distance were amazing.

Museum observation tower

View of KC skies from the observation deck

After the museum excitement, Eric and I grabbed some lunch at Grinder’s Pizza, a place his brother had suggested. We got a pizza and some hot wings with Grinder’s “near death” sauce—awesome.

Eric likes to claim that we had two near-death experiences that day.

Wednesday night we had dinner with Melissa and her parents, also dear friends of mine, at Jack Stack Barbecue in downtown KC. A number of cities claim that they have the best barbecue, Kansas City included, as well as Owensboro, Ky., where Eric grew up. Of course, the barbecue in KC is different from the barbecue in Owensboro—Owensboro barbecue is more vinegary, and the specialty is mutton; KC barbecue is thick and saucy. It was delicious. We had a lot of fun visiting.

Thursday we got up entirely too early, but I had to take Eric to the airport for a 6am flight to Massachusetts. He had to be there for the inspection on our house (which went very well!), and he was gone until Friday afternoon, so Melissa and I had some girl time.

We went to the Harley-Davidson Factory for a tour, where I didn’t get any photos, because cameras weren’t allowed. It was an awesome tour! We got to see the assembly lines where the Harley frames are moved along on a robot at a certain pace to give everyone on the line a few minutes to get their job done before the frames move on. No part of the motorcycle touches the ground until it is all fully assembled. The Audit Department randomly pulls finished motorcycles off the line for inspections, and any imperfections are marked with an audit sticker and the bike is placed in the factory cafeteria, so that all the workers can see where problems are occurring and can do more quality control. After a few days, the bike is taken to the “Harley Hospital” (just quoting the tour guide here), imperfections are fixed, and the bike is taken for a 30- to 40-mile road test by an auditor. So if you’re shopping for a Harley and you see one with about 30 miles on it, that’s the one you want, because you know it’s been inspected and tested by the Audit Department. Our tour guide also told us a story about a group of boys in the 1920s who consistently won motorcycle races. After their win, they would put their mascot, a live hog, on the Harley with them and take a victory lap. This is where Harleys got their nickname “hogs.”

We also checked out the house the Melissa just bought, and went out for dinner to celebrate our new houses.

Mel and I hugged goodbye on Friday afternoon. I picked up Eric from the airport, and we were on our way to Sioux Falls, SD, for the night.

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The drive to Sioux Falls was not bad at all, despite all of the construction we went through. Eric counted at least 20 miles of two-way traffic on the interstate, not to mention all the other stretches of road where lanes were closed.

 Along the way we saw about eight or ten signs for a place called Wall Drug Store, which is close to Rapid City, on the other side of South Dakota. Eric’s cousin Drew had told us about it and about all the signs we would see for it. We are already planning to stop there, just out of curiosity.

 

We made it to Sioux Falls around 9:00 and stayed in a hotel downtown that is right next to the hospital. What they don’t tell you is that it seems to have previously been part of the hospital. I checked in, and the desk clerk handed me two keys to the room—actual metal keys. I cannot remember the last time I ever stayed at a hotel with metal room keys.

 Giant hotel keys

 Meal we cooked in the hotel-- leftover Indian food heated in the electric skillet!

As Eric and I walked to our room we mentioned that the place had a rather sterile feeling—gray walls, wooden slab doors, not much color. Then we walked into the room and noticed that the toilet and tub were in the bathroom and the sink was out in the room, and everything was handicap accessible—no doubt the building had been converted from hospital rooms into a hotel! It was not the most comfortable place, but it was cheap.

It’s Saturday morning, and we are now off to the Badlands and Mount Rushmore. We’re staying at KOA campsites for the next couple of nights. Good thing we practiced setting up our tent!