Driving to Missouri has been extremely pleasant. I left Iowa on a morning with a brisk temperature of 44 degrees and I tossed an extra sweatshirt into my car just so I wouldn’t freeze on the way to a warmer climate. I’d shed that thing hours before making the border. I passed through Ames, Iowa where one of my friends from camp goes to college and it was the day of their big football game with their rivalry school. The buses were lined up miles from the stadium as they coasted through traffic heavy with Iowa banners flowing behind truck turrets and car antennas. I, fortunately, was going the opposite direction and sped along; casually passing cars that loitered too far below the speed limit for my taste.
I’d packed a cooler, though it didn’t really hold much in terms of sustenance. Stuck in a traffic jam after making it to the outskirts of St. Louis I gnawed on a peach as I shifted back and forth between first and second in bumper to bumper traffic. I disliked that immensely. Originally, I’d planned on staying in St. Louis for a while to visit with the plethora of camp people who congregate there, but I was chomping at the bit to get to work and didn’t want to skimp on my visitation in St. Louis so I postponed it for when I could enjoy it.
I visited Mojo in Springfield, overnighting at her casa in town. I’d been to Springfield once upon a time when I was like 12. Not too many memories of it beyond our trip to Branson, a short distance away. All I recall is Missouri using a certain seasoning or spice in EVERY food that I ordered, and I was not fond of it at all. But at Casa Mojo, I had a delicious pulled pork sandwich and corn on the cob, then we went out to visit the original Bass Pro shop and topped off our evening with some delicacy in Springfield called a concrete.
Now, call me crazy but I’ve never once found concrete to be delicious or even edible for that matter, but in Missouri concretes are basically the equivalent of extremely dense Blizzards from DQ. I ordered the one that promised karrot kake with two k’s, obviously a bold choice. Not only did it taste like liquefied then frozen carrot cake, but the chunks were unbelievable. Apparently, as I found out later, they have the means to blend an entire slice of cake or pie and then just add it to the ice cream. Around Thanksgiving they have a pumpkin pie concrete that is out of this world, and I will have to visit again to try another dessert medley.
With a full stomach that warned me vaguely about my ice cream ingestion, I went to bed. Also, the room I slept in is known to be haunted, a fact that was graciously shared with me THE MOMENT I ENTERED THE HOUSE. Trust me, if a ghost is going to haunt anyone, I’ll be that lucky victim. I was fine though, went to bed and fell fast asleep after driving all day. Then around three am I woke to pure terror as I felt something watching me. I opened my eyes once and saw this blinking light on the ceiling just to my left, thought UFO, and immediately retreated into my if I don’t see it, it won’t see me routine. I spent the majority of an hour wrestling around in the bed trying to fall back asleep and not have to open my eyes again, but there was a dire need for me to open my eyes and see what I feared.
The next morning, after tossing until sleep took over, I looked to the ceiling and found my UFO to be the multi lit portion of a smoke detector. Smirking, I laughed at my own stupidity and got dressed for the morning.
Sitka or Bust: Commute The World 