Hi fans,
Sorry for not writing yesterday: it (Friday) was the longest of our three major driving days
and we were too tired by the time of our midnight arrival at our hotel to post
anything.
We
had a great dinner with the Lauers Thursday night in Nashville and even visited their
favorite gelato shop for dessert.
We’re excited to spend more time with the girls at the Lauer cousin
reunion in late July!
At
Hillary’s house, she and Molly of course stayed up late catching up, while
Benno at first joined in and later fell asleep on the couch. Good thing too—he needed to manage the
first shift driving on Friday!
Friday
morning we left Nashville, TN, early, heading through southwestern Kentucky,
the extreme southern tip of Illinois, and Missouri on our way to Kansas. We were captivated by our brief
jaunt through Cairo, IL, where we walked down to the water’s edge at the spot
where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River. It was neat to see the huge rivers
combine into an even more massive river!
Had we not gotten out of our car, we would’ve been in Illinois for only
about 90 seconds, crossing one bridge over the Ohio River into Illinois from
Kentucky, and then almost immediately crossing another bridge over the
Mississippi into Missouri.
The
southeastern portion of Missouri is apparently very, very flat, much flatter
even than we later found Kansas to be. The minor route US-60 that we were on
for almost 300 miles wound its way through many rural areas, the occasional
small town, and eventually rolling hills.
We
were pleasantly surprised to find Ozark National Scenic Riverways, one of the
national parks listed in our national parks passport. There, we got out to see Big Spring, a natural mineral
spring in a scenic area of the Mark Twain National Forest. Such a great little find—we’d highly
recommend it to anyone passing through this area.
We
stopped in Springfield, MO, to have dinner with a lifelong friend of Molly’s,
Sara Eberhardt, Aunt Red’s daughter.
Though she’d known Molly since she was born, she hadn’t yet met Benno,
so it was fun for the pair to finally get to visit some and for Molly to see
her old friend.
After
dinner, we pressed on for a few more hours until we reached our hotel in
Topeka, Kansas, around midnight.
We didn’t stay for long, getting up for an early breakfast and then heading
off on the last leg of our journey to our first major sight-seeing destination
of Denver, Colorado.
Our
direction at that point was to “Continue on I-70W for 544 miles to
Denver.” So today, we enjoyed a
long and straight shot all the way across Kansas and well into Colorado. Having been warned that it was flat and
boring, we found it to be mostly flat and mostly boring. A few mild hills, the proverbial “amber
waves of grain,” some lonely cattle, and miles upon miles of wind turbines
entertained our eyes on the journey. After seeing no industry for miles, we made a panicked
stop to get gas with an 1/8th of a tank left, afraid we’d never find
it again.
After
having traveled hundreds of miles across Kansas, we finally found Oasis Travel
Center, which truly was a modern day oasis with the first Starbucks we’d seen
in the state thus far (as compared to every on every other corner in DC) and a Quiznos to boot!
As
we write this at 5:00pm, we’re pulling into Denver, CO, almost to Conifer, CO,
tonight’s destination, home of old friends. Later tonight we’ll pick up Molly’s Mom, Jane, at the
airport and she’ll join us for this leg of the trip. We’re seeing these big, beautiful mountains rise up in front
of us and are excited to explore them over the next few days!
