Day Two: Topeka, Kansas

Sorry we weren't able to blog yesterday, I was in the middle of the last sentence when the Word Press application on Adam's iPhone decided to shut down. Anyway, we stayed at a very nice KOA camp ground just south of Chattanooga Sunday night. It was my first time camping at an actual camp ground. I had been camping once before with my friend Becca, but it was a miserable 96 degrees in the middle of summer on the beach at Pirates Cove. The KOA was almost empty. There were maybe two other tents and a few RVs. For future reference, do not attempt to set up a tent in the dark. It took us twice as long as it usually would to set up. After we unloaded the car and got everything situated, we built a small fire and had a good time making s'mores together.

We hit the sack a little after midnight and enjoyed the view of the trees and stars through our canopy roof. However, it was freezing. Even with two mink blankets, my feet were like ice cubes throughout the night. I rolled myself up into a "Lindsey burrito" and somehow managed to get a little nap as the sun was rising. We got up around 8:30 and rode our bikes to the bathrooms, then back to the camp to cook breakfast on our new handy dandy grill skillet.

The ultimate sleepy bacon chef. It took almost double the time to cook, but I learned that by cooking bacon really, really slow, it doesn't shrink up to half it's size like it would on a stove top. Interesting. The grill was crooked, so don't think I make sloppy eggs. After breakfast, we packed everything up and drove down to the surprisingly clean facilities to get our free showers.

Here is our set up before we took it all down...

Here's Adam making sure all the air was out of the mattress...

And the building we took showers in...

We hit up the Race Track gas station to fill up and get some delicious coffee. Probably the best cup of coffee I've had in a long time, and not just because I was super tired.

Tennessee was absolutely beautiful. Lots of mountains and hills, very different from Florida. Adam is looking forward to stopping by on the way back home to see his cousin, Stacey. I'm looking forward to taking photos from lookout mountain during the fall... Hopefully the trees will be lots of colors when we come through. Kentucky went by pretty quickly... For Adam. He slept while I drove across the state, through acres and acres of grass fields, cow pastures and old, run down barns. I had fun going up and down the hills. Some of them were pretty steep, so I pretended I was on a roller coaster. I actually woke Adam up about 30 minutes before the Missouri state line to make him throw up his hands and yell, "Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

The greenest grass I've ever seen. I also got to see a chinook helicopter for the first time, it was pretty cool. After crossing into Missouri, we stopped at a small country gas station in a town where everyone drove an old beat up truck from the 90's. The station was surrounded by tractor dealerships, fields of grass and power lines, more cow pastures and dirt roads leading to more farms and fields. We drove about 5 miles to get back onto the interstate, since the gas station wasn't near the exit like they normally are. The next couple hours consisted of nothing but Crystal Light fruit punch and listening to a playlist I made, including songs by Muse, Elton John, Journey, and the occasional random song by Ricky Martin, Eiffel 65 or Bonnie Tyler... just to make sure Adam was awake =)

We made it to St. Louis just as the sun was setting. We parked on the roof of a parking garage next to the Mississippi River and rode our bikes to the St. Louis Arch and the Jefferson National Memorial.

After exploring downtown for a little while, we got back on the road in search for a rest area with picnic tables, but came across a White Castle first.

Since neither of us had ever been, we decided to check it out. It definitely isn't as good as Harold and Kumar made it out to be in their movie. Their burgers are greasy... just a paper thin patty with fried onions and a bun, drenched in grease. Their pickles suck. Their "sweet tea" sucks.

We met some pretty cool people inside the restaurant who happened to be from Tennessee and agreed that Krystal's is way better. 

After dinner, we continued west on 70 until we reached a really nice travel station in Topeka, Kansas around 2 a.m. We put some towels over the windows, located our pillows in our over-packed car and called it a night.

Until tomorrow,
Lindsey and Adam