Taking Two Cities

Missouri has two mammoth cities, St. Louis and Kansas City. We navigated both of them on the same day. Acting on our exacting timetable, we got going about 8:30ish and cruised
right through St. Louis without any slowdowns. It always makes our day when someone sails past us and then we see them by the side of the road with a trooper writing them up while we lumber past. That has happened several times in the last few days. Of course, they inevitably catch up to us and pass us again.

Our lunch stop was in a small burg where an interesting log slave cabin had been preserved. The lunch place across the street looked so full of potential--Frumpy Joe's--but we were bitterly disappointed. Don't stop there. Around this time we started seeing snow by the side of the road, residue of last week's storm in this region. Along with the bleak landscape of dormant trees, this is another reminder that winter is not over.


. By the time we arrived at our "scheduled" stop of the day, it wasn't even 3:00 yet, so we decided to take a chance and go ahead through Kansas City to St. Joseph, Missouri. Again, it was a pretty smooth sail, and we put Miss Charmin Garmin onto a campground that turned out to be in a busy part of town in the city that was home to the Pony Express. We had reached the desperation point of using the last of our coffee that morning, so it was a convenient place to hit the grocery store and stock up for our last few days of travel (as in wine, beer, coffee, and ready-made food).

As we were getting up and around this morning, the dreaded sound drew our attention: rain!
Thunder! Lightning! We hurried to unplug and now we are already in Iowa, headed around Omaha and back to South Dakota. Tonight or tomorrow we will have to winterize the Coach because low temperatures in Vivian and Rapid will be below the 20 degree mark for a few nights.
That's the spring we know and expect!

Sweet Alabama to Show Me Missouri

Our route yesterday was planned to avoid Memphis. We drove away from the holler knowing that it would be a long time before we ever found another campground that interesting. The mile-long back road wound past decrepit trailer houses and churches with graveyards. This area of gently rolling hills (outposts of the Appalachians) and mixed forests will be beautiful when the spring buds finally break out. For now, just a few trees have blossoms and winter still has hold.

It wasn't long until we crossed the line into Mississippi. At Tupelo, Elvis Presley's hometown, we turned north and in short order we were in Tennessee. Logging is prevalent here, and several precariously log-filled trucks passed us. We kept our distance. We stopped for lunch at a place I couldn't pass up: Greens, Beans, and Taters (without commas). How could we pass by that? One last opportunity for downhome Southern cooking, and it was worth it! Towards the end of our driving day, we came into Missouri. Last night we stayed in Cape Girardeau in a mundane campground that had the appeal of wifi, cable tv, hot showers, and a restaurant next door. We appreciate all of these luxuries, but it's no Sleepy Holler!

This morning we awoke to find that we had some puddles around us from the all-night rain. Having camped in a swamp at James Island, it didn't seem so bad. Now we are unhooked and heading to the big obstacle of the day, St. Louis. We will still be in Missouri tonight, just this side of Kansas City. The slog continues.

Sleepy Holler or Bates Motel?

Our first inkling of the place should have been when we saw the sign out on the highway that was peeling and faded. Nevertheless, we followed the camping signs down a back road and entered this campground that could be in the back country of Virginia or West Virginia. We debated whether to stay when we discovered the office was closed (at 3:30 in the afternoon?) and you had to self register. Looking around, we saw permanent trailers, mostly old, decrepit outbuildings, and old equipment that looked abandoned. Facing more traffic and another hour on the road, we decided to chance it. After setting up (pick your own site) next to the "new" bathrooms and laundry, I set out to take a photo of the sign and vintage trailer that I had spotted on the upper level when we had registered. A lady was opening up the store so I asked about the church that shared the entrance sign. She directed me to the road up the hill which I followed to find an absolutely beautiful and meticulously groomed white church with a red steel roof. Several small ponds dot the landscape; no doubt this is fishing territory when the weather gets a little warmer. Back at the camper, we are eating our leftovers from Marie's BBQ in Heflin and hoping that this place turns out to be pastoral and bucolic rather than the Bates Motel place that we first took it to be. I'm not taking a shower tonight though.