Sights Seen on the Road

August 10, 2015            odometer reading 1,550 West side of Kansas City, MO

This has been a day of highs and lows. But before I go into details, I want to say for the record that there has been more to this journey than driving like a maniac and geocaching. For instance, going through West Virginia I passed a gypsy caravan, a truck pulling a trailer that was painted to resemble a log cabin. Heck, it was so realistic it might have been built of logs! Across the back were a couple of words in Irish Gaelic, so I know they were MY kind of gypsies. I’ve never seen them in the US before. I believe the second word translated to ‘clan’ or ‘family,’ so the first word was their name.

Kentucky was much as I remembered it, although I didn’t remember the accent as being even thicker than Georgia’s. At one pit stop, I heard the cashier asking the customer to “swap” her card, and wondered if it was a credit card they didn’t take. Then the Southern part of my brain kicked in and I heard “swipe.” I stayed the night in a motel where they proudly displayed framed high-quality pictures of local celebrities, the place of honor holding a formal grouping of every winner of the Triple Crown including this year’s. Quick work to re-do such a lovely formal photo collage.

Indiana impressed me, in the southern section, with some really high-quality looking outdoor recreational areas. Also with the best roads I’ve traveled yet. Two of the rest stops held geocaches, each a satisfying quarter-mile walk/hike into a wooded area.

Illinois was a weird place. I think it’s made of nothing but clay mud. I felt like it was going to wash away or collapse, like an animal with no bones. Not a rock anywhere. Rivers and streams carved deep muddy troughs in the landscape, still no rocks. At one point, seeking a geocache (without reading the description first, a newbie error) I left the Interstate, finding that the roads immediately deteriorated into a state worse than any that Potter County can boast. A dubious grassy pair of ruts actually had a county road number. As I tried in vain to find a road that could be described as more than ‘field access for farm equipment,’ I was terrified I’d slide into the horrid clay or one of the abrupt, deep stream crossings, never to be seen again. At last I bumped across a field dotted with straw rolls to get back on I-64, only to find that the cache was in a rest stop three miles up the highway, an easy stroll across a freshly-mowed lawn. That was the only one I got in that state, as I read the description of the other one I’d downloaded and did not like the parts about ‘brush-busting’ and ‘brambles.’ In this weird place?

Now came the part of the day I’d been dreading: Driving in St. Louis. With one eye on the gas gauge and one on the clock, I decided to postpone both gassing up the car and lunch in order to miss rush hour in the city. A few minutes later, from the Interstate, I glimpsed the famous arch ahead. Whoa! It is so much more impressive, even at a distance, ‘live,’ than in jigsaw puzzles.

Of course, I was faced with a quandary right away. One of the bridges carrying one of the Interstates that meet here was closed, and I wasn’t sure which one: the one I was currently driving on, or the one heading north/south. Reading signs, watching traffic, moving from lane to lane, and being exceedingly anxious caused me to miss the pivotal moment when I crossed the Mississippi River. The Wabash had been darned impressive, and later that day the Missouri itself blew me away, but I missed the Mississippi.

But I spotted Busch Stadium and went baseball-ballistic. I was a high fly ball, and could hear the whole thing in Harry Kallas’ voice, bless him. That’s my excuse for missing my exit, but I managed to make a save two exits later and found myself driving up Market Street with the Arch perfectly framing the buildings at the end of the street. For blocks and blocks I drove, thinking that here was a structure placed to best advantage and designed to be viewed just this way; art AND great engineering. When I approached Ground Zero for the virtual cache, I was just too bloody impressed by the huge, glittering Arch looming above and ahead to pull over and get my landmark notes (and the picture I promised Nermal). Going around the block for another pass I found myself right AT Busch Stadium and the American baseball gene kicked in again. When I once more found myself on Market Street, the parking meters had the high-tech, hostile look of Cylons and there appeared to be no coin slot, so I timed the light at Broadway and pulled out into the lane that would take me to I-70 just when the light turned red. I got my landmark notes and pictures from inside the car.

It was a matter of ten grueling city-driving minutes to reach I-70, and just as I did the rain started. Great Plains, pouring-down rain, hiding the other cars and road signs, forcing me to a slow pace the other drivers barely exceeded themselves. And were there other cars! The traffic that was absent before was all on this stretch of superhighway, no doubt routed that way by the bridge detour. Miles and miles and miles of this. I was afraid to exit for gas or food, still watching that gauge droop towards the quarter. The road was sometimes six lanes, sometimes three, and it seemed several Interstates were still braiding together there. Somehow I stayed on 70 west and some twenty or thirty miles out of town the rain stopped and the traffic thinned enough that I could get to an exit lane. Even so, I was blocked by traffic from turning towards the good restaurants and filling station, and had to make do with a Phillips 66 and a slice of pizza from its convenience store. Once again I’m in Pepsi country, so I lived through the day on unsweetened Gold Peak tea and (at the moment) a diet Mtn Dew.

By the time I paused again, peacefully out in Missouri’s country side, the other two caches I’d downloaded, both back in the metro area, were nearly a hundred miles behind. One thing I noticed about Missouri is that angel’s-trumpet, also known as strangler-vine, is currently the most common flower blooming on the road verges. I also was reassured by occasional banks of rock breaking through the soil: weathered chunky limestone  or seams of shale, with a few ledges of something harder. This area is not at all hilly, but at least it has bones.

For a good many miles I’d had a song going through my mind despite the techno-fusion playing on my CD player, prompted by the road signs along I-70. “I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come. Oh, yes I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come. (At this point I play fast and loose with the lyrics.) They got the best steaks in the world and sure I’m gonna get me one.”

But the periodic rumbling noise I was hearing was getting louder, and I could no longer explain it away as a nearby truck or passing motorcycle. Did I do something to the exhaust during my impromptu detour in Illinois? The dealership said they left a guard plate off when they re-welded that one join. Or did their repair of the transmission leak fail, during that up-and-down shifting madness in West Virginia? I pulled into this hotel (I should know better, but this seemed like the cheapest one amidst a cluster of high-end hotels and suites) and here I am, with a referral by the manager for a muffler place that opens at 7 a.m., trying to de-stress and wondering, not how much money this will cost me, but how much time. I didn’t realize I’d crossed a time zone and blew my chance at a half-price buffet (including triple Happy Hour) in the hotel restaurant because I thought it was already after 7. Instead, dinner was a Good Humor ice cream cone. As stressed as I am, it’s probably better for me than that steak.

Still, somewhere during the Illinois debacle I came up with the knowledge that it doesn’t really matter if I complete the HQ Geotour, or even if I miss the Thursday night Meet-and-Greet. I was waxing quite philosophical about my reasons for going to Seattle, prepared to get there any day before Saturday… until the car began to act up. The gods of anxiety have upped the ante on me.