Day 3 - NASH to KC

Day 3

May 24^rd, 2012

Nashville to Kansas City

“It’s like a ten mile long car wash.”

Woke up bright and early since we had gained an hour. Got on my running shoes to go on my favorite type of city tour – a run. In the middle of tying my shoes Kyle hops outta bed and says “Screw it. I’m coming with you. Im not gonna sleep anymore anyways.” With that – we’re off.

Since we had seen the Titan LP Field Stadium the night before from across the Cumberland River we decided to make that our destination. After crossing over the bridge we get to the stadium and decide to run around it just to check it out. We see a lady walking into the stadium and politely ask her if we can peak inside. Turns out she’s the ticket manager and kindly shows us around the stadium and explains that there are a bunch of off-season construction projects going on. By August the Titans will be the proud owners of the second largest (to Dallas) jumbo-tron scoreboards. We got to see the scoreboards under construction and its crazy to see the inside of a scoreboard! Those things are huge.

After a jump in the hotel pool and the reorganization of our perfectly packed car aka snacks and electronics within reach at all time we headed off to Kansas City.

Google maps said 530+ miles and 9 and a half hours.

Turned out to take us a bit longer than that. For multiple reasons – primarily horrible drivers in Missouri (or as we loving called it MISERY – coined by Caitlin) and a crazy rain storm as we came into Kansas.

Drive highlights. There are a lot since we drove for over 10 hours.

-huge tires. We passed multiple trucks with 20ft+ diameters.

WIDE LOAD. We looked up the tires and they are used for enormous Caterpillar mining trucks.

 Welcome to Kentucky! –The Confederate States of America?

Welcome to Missouri! The St. Louis Arch…Gateway to the West

-terrible drivers and lots of traffic in Missouri. Apparently Missourians like to drive right at or below the speed limit and right next to each other so passing was impossible.

- becoming subways #1 customers. Ohhh road food. We stopped at Subway twice – once for Ali. Once for Kyle. And then mixed it up with the legendary KFC/Taco Bell combo. Shoutout to Shawn Devilla and Jaughlin!!!!!

Snackin’ it up at the Combination

Ali enjoying some KFC for the first time ever

-postcards are hard to find in Nashville

-Hit our max speed thus far – 87. Shhhhhh don’t tell the authorities.

-Ali asked ‘snooki’s a girl?!’ after hearing that Snooki was pregnant on satellite radio. Ali officially knows nothing about pop culture.

-road trip uniform doesn’t include shoes

-flipped a B on the freeway after being completely stopped for 15 minutes.

-Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas 5 states in 10 hours. Not too shabby.

Kentucky State Sign

Illinois State Sign

-1 14” mellow mushroom pizza has lasted two days of snacking

-Chipotle hummus is a dipping sauce of the gods. Spice it up.

-Google maps might’ve beat us

-Saw a guy wearing a hunters hat, sleeve less white shirt, and jean overalls driving his lawn mower.  He probably had a straw twig in his mouth.

-Kyle didn’t stall for the first 500 miles.

-Ali honked at someone.  Obviously a Missourian.

-Got punked by a road construction fool who blocked off an entire lane of highway for a half mile only to park his Chevy Cobalt in the right lane and walk up and down the shoulder.

- RAIN STORM – wow. That’s the most rain either of us have seen before. It was coming down so hard and so fast that everyone on the highway slowed from 70+ to 10 mph gripping their steering wheels searching for clear vision of the lane lines ahead. Kyle displayed flawless clutch control throughout the 10 mile monsoon.  We took a video or two!  

Finally pulled into Westwood, Kansas where Jack lives right about 9:30. It was so dark and so hard to see the numbers on the houses poor Kyle had to do a few three point turns – a little bit too much stick shift for the end of a long day. Curses were had.  Profanities flew.

Jack’s family (the Petersons) was so nice and let us stay in his little sisters room! It was great – we felt like we were living in a Pottery Barn Teen model bedroom.

 Kyle's bed is on the left (blue tree) and mine is on the right (pink tree)

The Petersons stayed up and talked with us for a while and we talked Mrs. Peterson about San Francisco cause she is going on a trip there in a few months.

Next day – Kansas City, KS to Hill City, SD

Driving stats for NASH – KC

 

Lost to google maps by 43 min. 

Seeing as we stopped for subway, completely stopped traffic in Illinois for 45 mins, and dealt with St Louis rush hour traffic….not bad. 

Total driving time = 10 hr 23 min. 

Total distance = 562 mi. 

MPG average = 44.2.