Day 1 Highlights:
We drove 700 miles and crossed six
states. Interesting sites today included the Batman Building in
Nashville, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, a strange barge on the Ohio
River that looked like a massive water bug, and boondocking at Cabela’s
in Kansas City.
Our first day on the road was a big day for driving. It was also the
first time I had ever driven our new truck pulling the camper (I'm
pretty sure I had logged a grand total of 20 miles driving our new
monster of a truck prior to this trip).
Sometimes
learning on the fly is the best way. And that’s what I did. I drove all
of the first day except for the big cities. Daniel took care of the
drive through Nashville and St. Louis. While traveling like this I try
to drive as much as possible so that Daniel can work remotely. It works
for us.
We
rolled into Cabela’s in Kansas City, MO right at midnight, only to
discover they no longer allow overnight parking. We decided to roll the
dice and parked in a back corner next to a group of semis who were also
breaking the rules.
Day 2 Highlights: 600 more miles down and we made it to Denver, driving a total of
1,300 miles in two days. Again, I was able to do most of the driving other than big cities.
We woke up at Cabela's and I had the kids write in their journals while we waited for the store to open. Then we strolled through the store and let the kids each buy something with their own money.
Jack settled
on a nice pocket knife (spending most of what he had), and Isaac picked
out a hat. We looked at all the animals on displays and talked about
what animals we might see on our trip.
We ran into Walmart for a few supplies that we needed and then filled up and grabbed some gas station coffee for me before starting our big drive for the day. Our truck has a secondary fuel tank on it, which allows us to drive for long stretches without refueling. On this day we almost ran out of gas and realized the gas lid was open (either blown open by the wind or not sealed fully at the refuel). Thankfully we noticed.
Kansas was so windy we had to stop
and zip tie the metal steps to our camper after they popped out while driving. We
actually had a marital dispute over the steps. Daniel thought I left them out
and drove for an hour that way. We stopped and fixed it. Then they
popped out again and he thought I didn’t do a good enough job of shutting them.
So we both got out and closed them together. But they started to pop out again when I was
passing a car. Mystery solved: excessive wind plus passing other vehicles was sucking them
out.
The kids enjoyed the windiness of Kansas at one of our refueling stops and also loved getting to see the enormous farming equipment that was next to the truck stop.
We had one final stop to refill our propane tanks before Denver as we anticipated cold nights ahead. Our back seat crew was grateful to be able to run around for a bit.
After the argument about the steps in Kansas, another argument arose when we arrived in Denver. When you are on a trip like this, arguments are just a part of the experience... It had been my job to clean
the fresh water tank on the camper before we left on this road trip.
Evidently I used too much bleach and did not flush enough fresh water
through the tank and we had been unable to drink our water for two days.
So we found ourselves outside at midnight in a campground in Denver –after two long days of traveling– freezing, and flushing out the water to make it potable again.
One other random thing that happened was the tube that holds our sewer hose came unscrewed at some point. I noticed something flapping in the wind next to the back of the camper, so we stopped to check it out and discovered that about four feet of hose had come out. Thankfully we were able to stop and save the hose before it came out all the way and we lost it somewhere east of Denver. I wonder what other mishaps will occur on this trip...
