Today we drove from the middle of nowhere Kansas to St. Louis Missouri. Unfortunately, it took longer than google said it would take, and we were led on an adventure through residential Kansas City to get our lunch, and we got slightly detoured in St. Louis, so by the time we arrived we were too late to use our pre-ordered tickets for the arch. We'll try again tomorrow morning before we leave.
It turns out that eastern Kansas is much more interesting than western Kansas. It was also a beautiful day (70*) with no wind so that helped too.
Once we hit Kansas City we found a place to get lunch. I hate it when a restaurant is advertised on a highway exit but then you find out it is 1 mile or more away from the exit! That happened and we found ourselves taking a nice tour of residential Kansas City.
I am so envious that the grass is already green here and the trees are budding.
Overall, Ollie traveled pretty well. The front seat is wide open for him but he prefers to be near people, which aggravated Zack occasionally, but the majority of the time everyone was happy.
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| Waiting for someone to take him to pee |
This night was a complete splurge...we stayed at the Hilton downtown a block from the arch. I had to park in a parking garage across the street and can only imagine how feral we looked in sweat pants (comfortable driving clothes), dragging our old suitcases, carrying the fan, and trying to wrangle the dog, walking through this upscale lobby.
To add to the humiliation, we could not get the elevator to work. Very entertaining we were! First we got on one of the elevators, the doors closed but the elevator would not move. So we dragged ourselves, all our stuff, and the dog off the elevator and tried the other one...same thing. Repeat dragging everything off the elevator. This time we ran into someone who was getting ready to get on the elevator and explained that they were not working. He then says, "oh...you have to put your room key in the slot first." It turns out there was a slot on the elevator and once you put your room key in the slot, the elevator worked fine!
The room is nice but nothing I couldn't live without
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| Not the greatest view - 5th floor |
We had to order room service because we can't leave the dog alone
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| A big beggar |
Of course, there is construction going on around the arch....there seems to be a theme here.
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| Construction on the bottom right |
***TRIP FINANCES***
Through the whole trip I only put $30.00 on my credit card (for a pet fee and only because the motel machine rejected my debit card for some reason).
Before we left I withdrew $1000.00 from my checking account and separated it into 10 envelopes - $100.00 in each envelope. Each day I took a new envelope and used the $100.00 for food, souvenirs, or other miscellaneous things. Any money left at the end of the day was put in another envelope and I would take a new $100.00 for the next day. This worked out so well and I have nearly $300.00 left over.
All the motels (with exception of the first night and last night in Kansas) were booked online and paid for with my debit card before we left. The only other thing my debit card was used for was for gas and pet fees at the various motels.
I am so glad I could do this for Zack and he was able to add the following states to his list
-Minnesota
-South Dakota
-Nebraska
-Wyoming
-Colorado
-Kansas
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