The road trip. Day two: St. Louis

Lia and I had decided to try and push through the first half or so of the country as quickly as possible, as after Nashville there wasn't much that interested us there. Driving to St. Louis confirmed that for us. 

The interstate was flat, still fairly populated, and the sun began its neat trick of setting westward - shining right into my eyes for a good few hours. Luckily the roads were flat, and there wasn't much else to see around other than silos in wide fields, so as we'd suspected, I wasn't missing much.

About five hours of Serial podcasts later, we saw the gateway to the west looming large ahead of us.

Our route took us through Kentucky, and, somewhat confusingly at the time, Illinois. If nothing else, our U.S. geography skills are now considerably better than when we started.  On the bright side, we could add another state to the list of ones we'd traversed on this trip.

To the Midwest's credit, they haven't totally obliterated all trace of the native peoples like the East Coast has managed. Here's a statue of a Cherokee tribesman on Cherokee Street, near where we ate the next morning. 

We went to bed pretty much as soon as we arrived, as it was late, and there were no food options immediately present. I was feeling pretty disheartened after 16 hours of driving in two days, and I needed some serious time to emotionally process our accommodation. 

Thanks to the miracle of Airbnb, it was located in a beautiful old townhouse, but was still staggeringly cheap. But our bedroom had four seven-foot posters of the owner's son's modelling work from the 90's on the walls. Fantastically, pre-publicly-adored Chrissy Teigen was also in the photos. I should mention that the room was the owner's son's before he departed to begin said illustrious modeling career, and now work in Seattle in the legalised marijuana industry, but I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. 

Next morning, we headed to the closest place for some breakfast, eager to depart St Louis as quickly as possible, with a long drive to Omaha, NE ahead. Unwittingly, we stumbled upon the rather charming antique row, Cherokee Street, which is of course now decently populated with brunch spots, a sustainable bakery, and plenty of antique shops to nosy around.

There was also a sweet pair of flower shops, which had they not been certain to die in either the remaining week and a half in the car, or the flight back to Boston, we may have picked some up!

Then we got the hell out of St Louis, right into a tornado warning. Next time, on Serial.