Leg 2 and 3

Day 2

10/29/10

Spent the day in St. Louis  visiting Will’s brother. Went to a cute café down the street from where his brother lives that would fit in beautifully in Burlington and got some delicious food and coffee. We also visited the St. Louis Arch, which is the “Gateway to the West”, the largest man made monument and is the tallest building in the city f St. Louis. There is actually a city ordinance that no building can be taller than the arch. While waiting to go to the top of the arch we walked through the westward expansion museum to pass the time.  To get to the top of the arch we took top of small six person capsules which were  specially designed to keep the capsule level as it passes through the arch. The capsules are part elevator, railroad track and ferris wheel. The capsules reminded me of the last scene in Charlie in the Chocolate Factor when Willie Wonka tells Charlie that he won the competition.  At the top of the arch we got to peer out small windows getting a birds eye view of the city of St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois, which are divided by the Mississippi.  We then went to a delicious pub called Morgan’s for dinner and then hit the road driving 5 hours through the state of Missouri which has route names like YY or G  instead of numbers. We continued a bit into Kansas before arriving in Lawrence Kansas at Woodridge Primitive Park at 1 am to camp for the night.

Day 3

10/30/10

This morning we woke up at Lawrence Kansas to see that we were really in the middle of nowhere Kansas. In Kansas the streets and routes are all numbers.      While driving across the state we have come upon some interesting things. The first is a giant wind turbine farm, which had hundreds of turbines that we could see from 12 miles away because it is so FLAT here.  Its crazy you really can see for miles upon miles out here. It is unreal! Entering the town of Hays, Kansas we came across religious billboards that provided a great amount of entertainment. They said things like “ If you died today where would you spend eternity?” and “Smile your mom chose yes” and of course there was the occasionally giant picture of Jesus. After driving across the entire state of Kansas I have come to the conclusion that Kansas consists of the following over and over again: cattle farms, hawks, dusty dirt roads, flat land, fields, random clusters of aspens, grain silos, water towers surrounded by small towns, irrigation devices, billboards, hail bales, pastures and an occasionally a single oil rig in the middle of a field.

As we crossed over into Colorado I was surprised to see that the portion bordering Kansas looks just like Kansas with the agriculture fields and flat land. In fact it may be even more sparse than Kansas. The first 40 miles into Colorado is what I pictured the entire drive through Kansas to be like. Every once in awhile a farm house would pop up which would stand out like sore thumb on the landscape because they would be surrounded by evergreen trees which served as windbreaks. Occasionally we would come across a small town that looked like it belonged in a western movie with its congregation of one-story worn down buildings. There were even exists off of I-70 W that had signs readings " No Services" and just served access to ranches and farms. It wasn't until the sun had set and color filled the sky that we saw the outline of a mountain which made us very happy.

Entering Denver, Colorado I have never seen such a sea of lights spread across the landscape. Denver doesn't have many skyscrapers but instead is spread outward probably because there is so much flat land that  the sprawl goes out instead of up like most cities. It was also interesting to see how many factories and corporations make up the city. When we arrived in Denver it was around 8 pm and we decided that we would drive though the city and find a camp site as we head into the Rockies. As we drove out of the city we realize that we were climbing elevation pretty quickly. We decided to exist at Idaho Falls (which according to their sign is where the gold rush began), hoping to find a place to camp along Route 40 which goes through the national forest in the area. This town was another one road town that reminded me a lot of the towns you see in westerns. It was pretty cool. As we continue on Route 40 we begin to climb a mountain pass as it starts to rain. We then see signs warning about the possibility of ice on the road but we didn't think much of it and continued to drive. However, as we continue to climb the rain starts to turn into snow and we begin to see  good sized snow banks on the side of the road. To make a long story short we drove around the Idaho Falls area for 3 hours in the snow looking for a camp site and  had no luck even after asking a cop where we could camp so we decided to drive to the next major town which was Dillon, Colorado and get a hotel room for the night.