Day Four - Golden, CO to Oak Grove, MO

Day Four

Golden, Co to Oak Grove, Mo

We had a nice morning, Nate and Kelly made us breakfast; we had eggs, toast and bacon. Tanner tried Marmite for the first time, he says it was like extra concentrated soy sauce. I read a book to Donovan. We didn’t get going fast enough, of course, seeing a pattern here.

We stopped for gas and I checked the oil. The truck has been driving well and the oil was fine. We also saw a little bit of downtown Golden.

Then we hit the road. Eastern Colorado and Kansas looked very similar: pretty flat, lots of corn, some other crops, cows now and then.

I still love my prescription sunglasses, best thing I have ever purchased, especially for driving

Tanner was interested in this turbine, since it was being assembled 

Stopped at a store that said they have products made in Kansas, Tanner knows I LOVE the Made in Whatever state store. It was okay, not amazing. The owner chatted with us and even gave Tanner a pep talk about going back to school. 

The most drama was a huge storm. We drove toward the clouds all day, they were impressive. We took pictures the whole way. Finally it looked like we would really run into them, so we turned on the radio, and the data on the cell phone. There was a severe storm warning for the county we were driving through. The storm was moving west to north east, but it was already north of the highway we were on. Everyone else just kept driving, including the trucks, so we did too.

My middle finger is on the highway where we are, my pointer finger is on the map where the radio said the storm was the most intense. Everyone else kept going, so we figured we would be okay. 

It is hard to take a photo from inside the truck of how intense the rain was

Tanner remaining calm. There was so much lightening I kept taking pictures of him hoping to get some in the background. I never did, but I did get a good video. 

It was mostly fine. There was lighting every few seconds for hours, always on our left hand side and not close enough to worry about.  There was some fairly intense wind, for at least a few hours, into and then out of the storm. It was gusty, so Tanner had to pay good attention to his driving. Especially when a big truck passed us, it would push us out and then suck us back in toward the truck. We did drive through some intense rain for about half an hour. Spray from vehicles passing us was the scariest part of that.

Forgot to mention the giant signs in Kansas, some promoting Jesus, many denouncing abortion

These two are when we were coming out of the storm, and you could see under the edge, over to the blue sky again

We knew we would be arriving in or near Kansas City too late for dinner. So we stopped in Salina Kansas for some BBQ. We were hoping for some Kansas City style. This just means they cook a lot of different meats, and they use a sweeter tomato and vinegar style sauce. Salina was cute and we had a really nice dinner. I never really think of Kansas as southern at all, but it is definitely southern in some ways. 

We got burnt tips in the sandwich, ribs, brisket, side of coleslaw and potato salad

Burnt tips reminded us a lot of the Chinese BBQ pork in humbao

The ribs glaze had caramelized, they were super sticky

Kansas has a turnpike, so we had to pay a toll. It was less than $6 for the whole section of road we drove. It reminded us of Florida, which was the last place we were on vacation that we had to deal with toll roads. Tanner was not familiar with the way rest stops off of toll roads work, they were nice, there was national chain restaurants, gas stations, etc, all on the toll road, so you don’t have to pay to get off and then on again.

That day took us a long time. The storm slowed us down a little bit. We also didn’t have any reservations for where we were going to stop. I was planning on that being in Lawrence, Kansas. But when we called the RV park they were full. We sort of searched online for alternatives for a bit, but then Tanner decided we could just keep going. I found a truck stop that looked good on the other side of Kansas City.

So we drove through Kansas City ,KS and Kansas City, Mo at nearly 11 pm. Which means it was already a really long day at that point. Kansas City was nuts! There is a bypass, but I didn’t know that until it was too late, besides it was late at night, so how hard could it be? Turns out very hard. There was a surprising amount of traffic, and everyone was going 70+ in a 55. We had to pay really close attention, we gained and lost lanes. Our freeway peeled off to the right, then to the left almost right away. There was huge construction and shifted, narrow lanes. It is way worse than trying to stay on I-5 through Portland for example.

So we made it through there and got to the truck stop. It was very full. After some arguing and a van leaving, we parked across 5 normal car stops. I got some water. It was very hot out. That was when we realized our plan to sleep in the back of the Subaru might be flawed.

We inflated the air mattress, I put on pajama bottoms. We rolled the windows down a bit, and propped up the pillows so people couldn’t really see in to the car right away. Turns out when the Subaru is on the trailer and you are sleeping in it, you are right at eye level. I fell asleep for about two hours.

It was very hot, I mentioned that. Turns out Kansas, Missouri and a few other states are under a heat advisory. So it was in the 90’s during the day, with a dew point in the 60’s and humidity in the 80 % range. So as we were trying to sleep, outside it was nearly 80 and still over 80% humidity. In the Subaru it was even hotter. Tanner describes it as sweltering, oppressively humid and hot. He slept for about an hour and a half he thinks. That was just from being so tired from such a long day on the road. He says it felt like there was stagnant air around his head. He ended up sitting up some, to get a breeze from the window. But never fell back asleep.

He thinks if it had been a normal temperate sleeping in the Subaru would have been fine. We were comfortable enough.

His moving around so much woke me up. So we gave up trying to sleep, Tanner felt like we might as well be sitting in the truck, driving in the air conditioning, then trying to sleep and sweating. We got back in the truck, got gas, and were on the road again before 4 am. He would like to point out that he felt pretty awake at that point. He is much better at staying up late than I am, and at functioning with less sleep.