And then, Peanut and I began our adventures together. We woke up in a beautiful campground and made breakfast. Or, attempted to make breakfast. Turned out that we had used enough of the battery that trying to use both the stove and the microwave was too much for it and the whole power system shutdown. We moved over to a site with electrical hookups to try to get things back on the grid, and then after a phone call to Daddy-o, found out that we had to restart the whole system. There seem to be some settings with our batteries that need to be adjusted so it doesn't shut down when they are still around 50% full. Eventually, we got our power back and then got on the road.
Our first stop for the day was the Pony Express Museum in St. Joseph, MO.
We learned about the Pony Express company and the riders.
Peanut did a scavenger hunt around the museum and learned a lot of new things. We may be learning history out of order on this trip, but we're going to get to hit up a lot of the key moments in our nations early days.
And then, we continued driving to Kansas City
where we got dinner at Winsteads. I've been hearing about this classic diner for years on the Happier Podcast with Gretchen Rubin and Liz Craft, so it was fun to stop here while we were in the area. We spent the night at my old roommate's house where I stayed up WAY too late talking first with her and her husband (who was also a friend back in our SD days) and then with her, just like when we were in our 20s, only I'm too old to go to bed at 3 a.m. anymore. I can't believe I didn't get any pictures with her, but it's not really what you think of in the middle of the night, haha.
Somehow, I survived the drive the next day, which was incredibly rainy, but luckily not too long, and we landed in St. Charles, MO in the early evening hours.
Peanut and I walked around the cute old town area,
and found an excellent parking spot on the main street. We had dinner and settled in for a movie night.
The next morning, I let him sleep for a bit while I went for a walk.
This bathroom was in the cute park across the street from where we stayed overnight, and it was nice to have a close by option, even if it did close overnight. But it was there for us again in the morning. Finding bathrooms is one of the more challenging parts of the free parking spots, but we do have our emergency toilet in the van that gets used on those nights.
Peanut joined me later for breakfast at a cafe and then a walk around some of the historical building.
This was the town that Lewis and Clark left on their expedition from.
We found an adorable bookshop, and everything in the town was decorated for the holidays.
And then, we drove down to St. Louis.
Our plan for the day was to see the Gateway Arch and learn all about Westward Expansion.
The arch is pretty impressive.
Peanut worked on the Jr. Ranger badge as we looked around the museum. It's actually a very involved undertaking and was a little stressful at times, but it did help him learn a lot from all of the exhibits and it's a pretty thorough look at what the US moving west looked like, not just for the white Europeans, but also the Native Americans and Mexicans who were greatly impacted.
We got to go up the arch and see the views from the top.
Peanut was pretty excited for this Percy Jackson moment--I love when we can explore a book/movie location and bring it to life.
Lots to see up top, and they don't let you stay very long.
He FINALLY finished the badge.
(this is what the little pods look like that we rode up to the top of the arch. Just the engineering to figure out how to move people up a curved, but also very steep in places, arch was quite the achievement back when they did it.)
When we came out, it was dark, so we got to see the arch lit up at night.
Quick walk to see it from beneath,
which was super cool.
And then, we had to get going so we could make it to Indianapolis to pick up Daddy-o who was able to rejoin us at this point.
He had to drive from the Bay Area up to Reno to visit the Victron distributor to get his new batteries and other parts and then back down to Manteca where he built an off-grid solar powered battery system in 5 hours (which is pretty much what took him weeks to build in our van!) He's definitely gotten faster this third time around. And so far, it's working, so we're just hoping it holds up and he doesn't have to fly home again. It's good to be back to a party of three.
