Zuke and Melissa: Midwest Trip Days 2 & 3 - Denver, Kansas, & Missouri

Tuesday morning, Zuke was up bright and early taking the van to the dealership to see about getting the A/C fixed. He came back about 3 hours later with not very good news. First off, they said that the whole a/c system would need to be replaced. Problem number two, it would take all day to fix, leaving us checked out of our hotel with our only vehicle in the shop. Problem three.....the stupid finance guy at the place we had purchased our van the previous month had neglected to file any of our warranty papers yet, so it would have cost us about $1500. Yeah....we decided to just endure the heat and humidity. And boy, would we have to endure! We stopped for a quick lunch at IHOP, got drinks, and got onto what we thought was the right road. After being led through downtown Denver and a million side streets, we found out that there were actually TWO highway 40's in Denver....and we were not on the correct one. Our little scenic detour had cost us about an hour and a half in midday heat. Not cool. The heat got so bad that we had to stop at a gas station about two hours outside Denver and get ice cream. Most of the next six hours or so is a blur to me because I tried to sleep through the heat and emptiness that is Kansas. We stopped around 8 at probably the nicest truck stop I'd ever seen to get dinner at the Subway inside. I think we lingered around for a while because their a/c was cranked up to high in there! We hit the road again, and drove another 2 or 3 hours before stopping at another truck stop. The only thing I really remember about this one is how GIGANTIC the bugs were! Seriously, there were some that were the size of the palm of your hand. One of the huge ones followed Alexander into the van, and we all had a good freak out for a minute. Driving through the dark, you could see all the weird colors of the bugs as they hit your windshield. I must have been really tired, because I somehow found that amazingly amusing. We finally rolled into Kansas City around 2 am, and pretty much passed out at our hotel.

Wednesday morning, Alexander had a meeting with his guidance counselor at UMKC, so Zuke took he and Annalee over to that while the kids and I got to lounge around the hotel for a bit. Once they got back and we loaded up, we went on a bit of a sightseeing tour. We went into Independence and saw the RLDS (or Community of Christ) temple, as well as the LDS visitors center there. We stopped and had lunch at Arthur Bryant's, which is supposed to be one of the best bbq places in KC. I wasn't amazingly impressed, but everyone else seemed to love it. After lunch, I was determined to get Tyler's haircut, so we drove around for a while until we found a Supercuts. Unfortunately, this shop was in the "ghetto part of town", as Alexander called it. Tyler and I got dropped off, and I felt like I had stepped into the movie "Beauty Shop". There is a definite culture difference there. After waiting for half an hour and having Tyler fall asleep on my shoulder, I called Zuke to just come pick us back up. Unfortunately for me, while we had been in the shop, everyone else had found this cute little street with this amazing ice cream parlor/bakery on it. I was jealous, but at least the brought me back a brownie. :)

Once we got out of the city, we drove 20 minutes north to Liberty to go see Liberty Jail. Wow....what an amazing experience. You hear the stories of how bad the conditions were at that jail, but it's a completely different experience to actually see it. It was really enjoyable to explain the story to Tyler, especially leading up to us going to Nauvoo. Once we left there, we started on our 4-hour drive to Nauvoo. Oh my goodness, Northern Missouri is beautiful! So green, with winding country roads. I drove that stretch of road, and it was amazingly relaxing. We stopped and grabbed dinner in Keokuk, which is just across the river from Nauvoo, and then headed to our destination. Driving along the Mississippi at sunset was so beautiful! We found our villas, which were way out on the edge of town, and got unloaded. After staying in Motel 6's the past two nights, this villa was like heaven! It was basically a 2-bedroom apartment, with 2 bathrooms, a big kitchen and dining area, a decent sized living room, and washer & dryer. We were so tired from getting to bed so late the night before, that we all hit the hay pretty early.

**Post Edit: I just remembered this funny story. Before heading to bed that night, Annalee and I decided to drive back into town to the convenience store to grab some stuff for breakfast the next day. Well, let's just say that that country road was very dark, especially at 9:00 at night. We're driving along the road, when all of a sudden we see this small animal run across the road, stop dead in the middle of our lane, and stare at us with glowing eyes. I got freaked out that I would hit it, and swerved off the side of the road, almost into a ditch. It wasn't until we were passing right by it that we noticed........it was a skunk. We were so stunned that all we could do was laugh. On our way back down the road to our villa, we saw the skunk again, except this time it was dead on the side of the road. Thankfully it wasn't our car that brought the skunk to it's demise!