Kansas City and beyond

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We did make it to Kansas City the next night. It was a very long drive. Nebraska was mildly better than North Dakota, mostly because the size of the insects we had to scrape off the car were smaller (in North Dakota they were like locusts and additionally made a crunchy sort of sound as they hit the car - like the first scene in Men in Black). We actually stopped at a gas station that I was afraid to get out of the car because there were so many bugs everywhere. It was nuts. Another thing that made the drive through Nebraska slightly better was the thunderstorm we got to watch as we drove. It went on for well over an hour! Seriously, over an hour of near constant lightening. It was extremely entertaining - like fireworks.

In the morning we went to Kansas City and had a very early bbq lunch. It was delicious as advertised, and it felt excellent to so quickly hit a major tourist attraction. It’s pretty famous - it’s called Arthur Bryant’s. If you look it up, I’m sure you’ll find it, sort of an institution there it seemed.

We then continued through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. We stopped at Matt’s friend Andy’s apt in Cincinnati for the night. We were pleasantly shocked to see that his apartment was absurdly fancy and we actually got a very good night sleep, and a lovely view of the Ohio River and Kentucky. We even accidently made it to Kentucky when we went over the wrong bridge.

The next morning of course we headed back to NYC! Right through the rest of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the great state of New Jersey. Ohio was the least pleasant of these with both the huge (like 6 stories of tubing tall) and rather unattractive looking cross on the highway, as well as a house with the entire roof painted to look like a confederate flag. No offense to the cross, but if it’s going to be that large they can at least make it a little prettier (maybe paint it? Lavender would be nice…), and the fact that the state of Ohio hasn’t planted some trees or something to block the ugly house expressing it’s free speech is just ridiculous. It’s not particularly welcoming to drive past. It was a huge relief to reach lovely New Jersey. PHEW!

Anyway. Home now, and time for statistics.

Estimations:

We drove through 20 different states, and drove 6,999.2 miles. Matt drove about 90% of the time. I now have over 3,000 pictures to sort through. Better get started…

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