Great Road Trip of 2017-Part Three

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Another 45 minutes down the interstate and we were getting hungry for lunch so we stopped here in Leavenworth.  Not the one in Kansas(that's one of the few states I haven't been too yet), but the one in Indiana on the North side of the Ohio River(KY is on the South side of that watery boundary).  I bet you didn't know there was a Leavenworth in Indiana too.  It was about the size of a speck of dust and no prisons in sight.

It was around 3 pm so the place was deserted.  I got my first real meal of the day(and sobered up)........

A breaded pork tenderloin sammich and unsweetened ice tea.   I don't know what it was but that pork tasted so good!  I left most of the fries(as I knew we'd be seeing a LOT of French fries this trip and they were nothing special.

After our late lunch we stopped at the Shell gas station nearby so we could fill up the car and start using some of those Shell gas gift cards.

And that's when the first black cloud of doom hovered over us.

I swiped the gift card and started pumping gas(Hubs was inside getting coffee or something).  After about 8 seconds the pump shut off when I reached $1.98 spent on that gift card.

I went, "Huh!", to myself, because that was strange as this is the first time we tried to use one of those gift cards so it should have $50 on it.

So I finished out that transaction at $1.98 and tried swiping another gift card.  I got a strange message at the pump to "See Cashier Inside" and the card wouldn't work at all.

When Hubs came back out I explained what had happened and gave him both gift cards(the one that let me use $1.98 and the second one I tried to swipe that wouldn't work at all)to take inside to the cashier/attendant to see what was going on.

He came back outside and said the cashier tried the cards and neither had any money on them.

WTF?!?!

I had $300 in Shell cards(6 x $50 per card)and this information didn't bode well. 

I was in no position to do anything/call the company at this point(we only had a flip phone with limited minutes and we are on a cross country trip so had neither the time or where with all to deal with this now).  I'd have to handle this when we got home.

It was a good thing I didn't HAVE TO rely on these gas cards for this trip!  If so we'd be sunk.

So I tried to forget about it until we got home in August and not let it ruin my enjoyment of this trip.

We put the rest of the gasoline on our credit card and headed West.  We still had 5 hours of driving until we were stopping for the night.  

It was tempting to go to Santa Claus Indiana but we were on a tight driving schedule that day. ;-)

An hour after Santa Claus we were crossing into Illinois.

This portion of the driving was a lot of the photo above out the window.  Fields of crops and just roadside fields with vegetation.

At our next pitstop I noticed the outside temperature on the rental car's dashboard had hit 99F.....

Unfortunately for me(fortunately for Hubs who LOVES HOT weather), this temp was a portent of things to come.

This stretch of driving included going through St. Louis too.  We didn't stop in St. Louis(been there, done that)and we got through that clusterfuck before rush hour thankfully.

Here's the Mississippi River from one of the bridges into St. Louie over that waterway....I don't remember which one we crossed over on.

Nice shot of the suspension bridge over the Old Man River......

And just like that, we were in......

We had another 2 hours of driving to get to our hotel in Columbia MO so no stopping for us that day.

I think it would have been fun to stop at Ozarkland(I am all about roadside attractions!)but it was not to be this trip.  A "Barn Full of Bargains" sounds right up my alley! lolz

A photo of the place from someone who  stopped there and posted this photo on Yelp.  The reviews there were all over the place, from neat to gross. lolz

We found the hotel right before dark(after 7 something)and lugged the luggage into the room and it was still way hot outside so it felt good to finally get to the hotel.

We were both starving so we got Jimmy John's delivered to the room for dinner.  A little unwinding and tv and it was off to sleepytown for us.

And Day Two of the Epic Trip to West 2017 was in the books.

Sluggy