Day one.
All in all, I feel pretty proud of myself that we were only 4 hours behind schedule. On Smarr time, that's average. Thinking of all the things that I lacked in planning and preparing for, it's a miracle that we left on Sunday at all. It's insane that it's more than a week ago that we left. Ali has gone and I'm on my own. Somehow I still haven't found time to sit down and actually write something. So here is my first try. I'm going back to day one.
It's a good thing that we left later. We got time to organize and say goodbye to Coco and Russell with pancakes and coffee. One less thing buy on the road. One less stop to make long way. 13.5 hours is no Cakewalk. By the time we got to St. Louis, my eyes were seeing things and all I wanted to do was get out from behind a steering wheel. Some of the notable highlights were the sunset, the hillside yoga at the rest stop, Alia running hills, Pringles, and seeing the art of St Louis lit up at night. We were lucky enough to have people to stay with the first night, and even luckier that they had an adorable dog that woke us up in the morning with his bird toy. Either way, I was very happy when I came out of the bathroom saw him throwing it around the room. Not much time in St. Louis, so we grabbed coffee and boogied.
Apparently, there's a museum that is basically an adult McDonald's play place. So yes, I will definitely be back. We didn't love the idea that we would be driving for about 12.5 hours to Amarillo, Texas so we broke it down to the Great Salt Plains in Oklahoma and decided to camp there. The salt Plains are an incredible place. It's a huge open landscape completely flat that looks like snow until you see it up close. We got a little lost going to the wrong place at first, but we found the dirt road and meandered our way back to the plains. Sparkly and crystallized and filled with holes. Holes everywhere. Yes, holes. You can dig for salt crystals here. It's so cool. Definitely worth the dirt road adventure to get back there. We weren't prepared, but some kind citizens left behind some garden trowels and we borrowed them to start our treasure hunt. Eventually, I was impatient and found my hands were faster. Digging like Coco burying his tennis ball in the snow.
Somehow in my utter excitement, I misplaced the keys among the vast landscape of holes and piles of dirt. Not a good place to lose keys. Luckily Alia not only found a sweet little crystal, but she also found the keys. Alia for the win in the plains. Since we got there a little later, we were just in time for sunset. And o what a sunset it was. Once the clouds changed, the sky turned blazing bright pink and red and orange and the plains turned to a cool blue and purple gradation. I wasn't going to waste this light. Alia turned model and we shot the shit out of that sunset. It was like I couldn't control my shutter finger. I just kept clicking away.
Once the people who looked like they did this every day peaced out, we figured we needed to leave. It closes after dark and it was definitely getting there. Along the dirt road, the cows were getting ready for bed and the sun was setting all around us. We followed the dark sky back to the campsite and got set up. Maybe we should have heeded the warnings of the coyote chatter and rustling in the bushes. Or the lightning off in the distance and giant spiders in the bathroom. But we did not. We did make some incredible turkey and pickle sandwiches though and I somewhat figured out how to tune my guitar. And the starry sky was incredible...until the clouds rolled in.
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