If You Blog It, They Will Come – The Trailer to Kansas City – Day 12

Katie and I awoke with a bunch of ideas for what to do, but only one firm requirement: be out of the campground by 11am. Besides that, everything was up in the air. There are certainly positives and negatives to this approach, but personally I like not planning things out too much when you don’t have to.

Before anything else, we hit up the showers. Then we hitched up and headed to the dump station. While there, I realized we were low in two of the trailer tires. We decided this needed to be addressed right away, and headed towards a gas station to inflate the tires.

Our plan had been to head towards Rapid City, South Dakota. I was excited to get to see the Badlands again, as well as a full-size replica of Independence Hall. You read that right. There is a place with a full-size replica of Independence Hall in the middle of a corn field, and we are going to be there in less than a month. Get ready.

While filling the tires, Katie made some really good observations. We both wanted to see Kansas City, as well as Denver. We were thinking of doing them next year, as we tentatively plan to do the Kentucky Derby and Indy 500. However, we realized that Kansas City and Denver aren’t really close to those events. We reached the realization that this would be our best opportunity to see those two cities. So, we started heading back in the other direction towards Kansas City. Luckily, we only had to go back about ten miles.

We drove out of Illinois, through Iowa, and into Missouri. Along the way, we passed the Mighty Mississippi. Besides that, the scenery today consisted of an endless expanse of cornfields, a few pastures of cows, and a few Bennigan’s. Who knew they were still around?! Everyone says how boring this drive is supposed to be, but we actually thought it was very peaceful and beautiful. The only downside for Katie is that we did not find Kevin Costner.

It would end up being our longest drive yet, at over 400 miles. I was planning to stop as soon as I got tired, but the weather was nice and the sun ended up giving out before I did.

Since it was a Friday night, we weren’t able to secure our usual discount campground accommodations through Passport America. No problem, we found a Wal Mart and pulled in at about 7:30pm. After making a few purchases (AAA Batteries, canned chili, and canned potatoes), we headed back to our trailer. It was a little warm without the A/C, but with the windows cracked, not unmanageable. We took it easy, excited to hopefully find somewhere more stable to stay and catch up with some relatives near Kansas City over the next few days.