Arrow Rock to St. Louis

As I mentioned, we didn't have any rain during the night, but we awoke to ominous clouds and some thunder. It was still early, and if we left immediately, we'd get to St. Louis way before Jenny woke up. So, we decided to take a quick bike ride. After changing from our "camper" clothes to our "elite cyclist" outfits, we headed off, and it felt great to be riding again.

However, when we stopped to chat with a neighboring RVer, we learned that tornadoes with baseball-sized hail were forecast. Although it would have been good for the blog to get hit by a tornado, we switched strategies from "go for a quick ride" to "get the hell out of Dodge."

This turned out to be a reasonably good decision, since tornadoes did come through the area later, killing three people (video of that tornado).

So we pushed on, and did run into about the most intense rain I've seen. At one point we had to pull off the highway and wait it out under an overpass.

A few hours later we arrived at Jenny's apartment, and were immediately put to work packing.


Her apartment,

shared with Jess, Jen, and Sarah was designed before the days of pesky building codes. It has bathtubs that you have to crouch down in,


stairs that encroach on the living room,

and twisty turn stairways that require a roadmap.

Those are just the kind of stairs you want when carrying large, heavy boxes.

Next, it was over to the hotel, check in, and sneak the bikes into the room.


This was a nice hotel (Drury Inn) -- hey, I could get used to this. Free beer and wine at night, free long-distance calls, free wifi, and free breakfast. No leaky airbeds. Of course it came to $165 for two nights.

BTW, our per-night camping fees have ranged from $7.50 to $26, averaging around $15.

Next, we officially entered the high-calorie portion of our trip with a barbecue at the home of Jess's 'rents (Mike and Carol). Mike (on the right) smoked ribs and pork for six hours for this meal -- they were fantastic.

Mike's been following the blog, and gave me grief about not keeping it up to date.

Here are the graduates: Adam, Jenny, Jen, Jess, and Sarah.

Next, I lay in the car in a drunken coma while Gunilla guided Lena back to the hotel, and we slept in this thing called "a real bed."