Yesterday marked a strange day indeed. The day we ventured back into the East.
Waking up in Kansas City was one of the hardest things we’ve done in a while. We were so excited that Taylor didn’t have a morning meeting, so we decided not to set an alarm at all. We figured we would wake up nice and early on our own.
Unfortunately, our bodies must still be on Pacific time because we woke up at like 8:30 am still feeling exhausted. We knew we had an 8.5 hour drive and wanted to stop for lunch in St. Louis.
We were shocked we slept in that late and still felt groggy and exhausted. It felt more like waking up at 6:30 am.
Sent into a hurry, we packed our bags, grabbed a packaged muffin from the hotel for breakfast and hit the road. It was only 3.5 hours to St. Louis and we drove it nonstop.
It’s crazy being back in the East. Civilization and cities are not so far apart anymore. When we drove through Montana, Wyoming, and Oregon, we often looked for a gas station when we hit half a tank. Not out of fear but out of necessity. Half a tank for us is about 200 miles, and when gas stations out there can be 100 miles apart, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
However, now being in the East, gas stations are not so rare. Yesterday was the first time in a while I let the tank go until the gas light came on. We found a gas station on the next exit and continued on the journey.
St. Louis was really neat, but way too hot. This was also a nice welcome home present to the southeast. (Even though we discovered Missouri is considered the midwest). We had forgotten how hot and humid the south is. Gosh it’s just way too hot; when will fall come back?
We ate at a little Italian restaurant called Rigazzis. They have been there since the 60s and were definitely a hole in the wall. The toasted ravioli was great, as were our sandwiches!
As we approached the restaurant we thought it was totally empty and abandoned. We figured we’d be the only ones in there. To our relief, we were wrong. Just like the magical tents in Harry Potter, the restaurant expanded and seemed much larger inside, and was full of boisterous people enjoying what seemed like a local favorite.
Leaving Rigazzis with what would soon become our leftover dinner, we headed to the arch.
Wow! The arch is huge! We basked at the huge 600ft arch soaring high in the sky overlooking the Mississippi river for a few minutes. Then, being in sweatpants and now covered in sweat, we hurried back to the car. We are so happy we saw the Gateway Arch, named because it was a gateway to the westward expansion of the US. Yesterday, though, it was a gateway back into the East. A gateway back home.
The rest of our journey to Lexington was pretty plain, though there was a lot more traffic going in and out of cities. It’s funny how easy the drives were in Montana where it was just a bunch of long stretches with no other cars. Now the roads are more windy, a lot more trees, and even more cars. It makes it more exhausting to drive for sure.
We actually got stuck for a solid 30 minutes or so in a traffic jam. We don’t know what happened, but they needed to call the helicopter in. So definitely keep those people in your prayers. The dozen or so police eventually closed a lane on the opposite side of the highway and had us all turn around, closing the whole highway down.
This added about an hour to our drive, but gave us time to eat dinner when we sat there waiting. We made it to the hotel in time to checkin and rush out to our favorite cookie shop, Crumbl. The line was long, but totally worth it when we got back to the hotel to eat our red velvet chocolate chip cookie and a dirt chocolate cookie.
We watched a few episodes of the Suite Life and then went to bed later than we had this whole trip. Again, I think we’re stuck on the Pacific coast time, 1am just didn’t seem that late.