Kickin' it in Kansas!

Made our way across Missouri into Kansas City and stopped at the Great Wolf Lodge. When we got out of the car it was so windy it took my breath away. The resort is directly across from the Kansas Speedway which is a sight of it’s own. We had a blast, the kids especially loved the bucket that would dump 1,000 gallons of water every five minutes. We were able to let them roam around on their own because we knew every five minutes they would be back under the bucket. 

We packed back up and left Kansas City at around 3:30CST. This time our technology failing was my phone, dead to the world. FUN TIMES—NOT!! Quiet drive until we stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner. Another excruciatingly long terrible experience—beginning to think our stops are doomed. The bright side was the hilarious story that I have to share!! You see this afternoon I had asked Jonathan to run out to the car to grab our dry clothes to change into after the waterpark. He thought he’d be smart and change the bag so he wouldn’t have to carry my black and pink monogrammed bag through the resort and in doing so he forgot his underwear along with both the boys—so they were all going commando.  Our waiter took forever to bring out our ketchup at dinner, so Jonathan goes over and takes a bottle of ketchup from another table. As he went to sit down his pants catch on the back of the chair and came down a fraction, not all the way but enough to be considered a healthy moon. After his face turned blood red and he fixes himself he asked if the people at the table behind him were laughing. As it turns out the three men at the table behind him were 2/3 blind. Which worked out for him but then he started to retell the story and I had to remind him that they probably have exceptional hearing and even if they didn’t see it they definitely heard all about it.

We decided we should probably just stay at a hotel at that exit, but unknown to us there were a lot of local events going on and so there were "NO VACANCY" signs everywhere. It was like being on Carolina Beach anytime from May 31-early Sept. We drove through every little town from Lincoln, Nebraska which is where the University of Nebraska is, until we finally 3 hours later found a place in Hastings, Nebraska. Never heard of it—don’t worry neither has anyone else. Just before we stopped I happen to see a sign that was very appropriate and definitely felt like it was put there for me to see. I was exhausted, tired of looking didn’t have my phone or Garmin to search with, and just wanted one place we called to say they had a room and then out of nowhere I saw this sign. 

We ended up at this super shady Super 8 where we slept. The next morning I woke sick as a dog, and could barely stand up long enough to walk from the bed to bathroom (sorry for the TMI) and just wanted to leave. I staggered down to the car, took some very strong nausea medicine and went to sleep for the next three hours. During that time Jonathan told me that he saw a guy that was hitchhiking to Cheyenne, but we agreed that we have seen entirely too many episodes of Criminal Minds to every pick up a hitchhiker again. Once I woke up we stopped for lunch at quite possibly the only restaurant (and by that I mean an Old McDonald’s per Parker) on the interstate for 100’s of miles.  I quickly took a baby wipe bath (EWW--I KNOW) and got dressed so that we could eat. I was so excited to go inside and hear Darius Rucker playing on the overhead. As we stood in line, and also while we were eating people began trickling in a few at a time and every new person knew everyone else there. The thing that seemed odd to me was that it was approx.. 10:40am and there were people of every walk of life in there. Question: Do any of them have jobs? How can they all just go to McDonald’s at 10:40 in the morning. It was really strange. It seemed like every person in the place was either related or friends and nobody else found it weird that no one was at work. But we did get a few strange glances, as being the “strangers.” I guess not many people stop there. We stopped for gas and saw for the  time in my life a sign that said “pop” instead of “soda.” I guess that’s normal here but I had to take a picture. Once we were back on the highway we got detoured through this uber tiny town and as we passed the town school we all got a good laugh because there was a four-wheeler parked in the parking lot next to all the other cars. Little did we know that non-traditional vehicles were a common method of travel—a quarter mile up the road we saw a tractor parked outside of a tax office.