Great Road Trip of 2017....Part Four

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.

So after a hotel breakfast(not bad)we headed back out onto the highway out of Columbia, Missouri into I-70 West.

Not a lot to see along this stretch of highway except billboards and greenery.  

Lots of Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion signs, large American flags and signs for competing custom footwear dealers(Kleinschmidt's and Boot Barn). 

 Each store sign claimed to have an every increasing inventory of boots at fantastically lower and lower prices but we didn't feel the need to stop and see.

                                       

Other than this exit sign for a place called "Knob Noster", I did see a sign on I-70 that peaked my interest-a sign for a surplus grocery dealer near Odessa MO.

I think the sign at the exit was handmade and we turned off onto highway "M" and evidentially we shot past it and made a 10 mile detour.  The pole building that housed the outlet was right off this exit but was hidden from view by a lush jungle of trees and vines(it was July after all)but the building was visible coming from North on "M" back to the interstate exit.

Found it!  

We had been on the road for an hour already and it was sunny and already almost 100F degrees outside at 10 ish in the morning.  So we took a break and walked around inside the Surplus Grocery Warehouse.

This bag of Lucky Charms marshmallows came home with us(I knew Ex-College Boy would love them!).

Rite-Aid returns.....anybody need an enema? lolz

I had no clue what this was(and if we hadn't been so far from home I might have bought a can to see).

It's native to West Africa, quite popular in Jamaican cooking and is a fruit related to the Lychee fyi....

Where else could you find a menorah....

sitting right next to a Catholic Saints candle with Spanish writing on it?

Hmmm, I wonder if they would have let you redeem those Rite-Aid instant coupons on that mac and cheese?? ;-)

I wonder how stale these fortune cookies were?  I don't know, but the "fresh" ones I get for free when I order Chinese take-out are pretty stale already.

This place was massively large.  It was also very dark inside(which was a plus given the outside temperature that day).  This is the best shot I got to show you how big this warehouse was. This was one aisle out of 7.  And they had a second "room" as well as a refrigerated 18-wheeler car connected to the buildings(which you could see part of in the outside shot I took). 

I didn't buy much(the bag of marshmallows, 2 small tins of mints and a couple of big jars of candy sprinkles to give to Kim for all her baking needs are all I recall).  It was an interesting stop but we had to get back onto the road.

Back on the interstate we kept seeing signs like this.............wtf?!?

So after driving a bit more and a stop to gas and pee we were hitting the Kansas City metro area.  One of our "Things to Do" on this trip was to hit a barbecue joint in KC.

And man, did we have a LOT to pick from!  You can't spit in KC without hitting a BBQ place. lolz
Wanting to avoid downtown we settled on a place that was in North KC near the airport.

                       

So we had an early lunch at Hawg Jaw BBQ.

On the other side of the building was a brewery called "Big Rip" but it wasn't open until later.

Their website is HERE if you are ever in the area and get a hankering for good 'cue.

My plate-2 meats, cheesy corn and smoked mac and cheese with an unsweet tea.

Hubs' plate-2 meats, chili and cheesy corn with a local beer.

The ordering window

The menu

The early lunch crowd in the dining area.....

And me outside posing under the sign with my leftovers.

Back on the road again heading north on I-29 toward Nebraska.  But first we had to find our way out of this industrial area of KC.  We traveled through some sketchy areas before we got outta Dodge.  This shot was past the worst of the urban blight.

And soon it was back to fields and farms along the highway......

Two hours outside of KC we needed to stop for gas again....

I got out of the car and walked around to stretch my legs while Hubs filled the car's tank.  The gas station was up on a "hill"(or what passes for a hill in this part of the Midwest)and you could see the other businesses off that exit below.

.And there was a dinosaur statue on the grounds of the gas station.  This was a Sinclair station.

DINO the Apatosaurus(formerly a Brontosaurus), the Sinclair Co. mascot and me in a selfie....

The last time I saw a DINO or a Sinclair station was in 1998 when I went to a Beanie Convention in Minnesota.  We saw it driving back to Illinois from Minnesota.  It was somewhere in Eastern MN or in WI.

The Sinclair company celebrated it's 100th anniversary in 2016.  I guess DINO got a makeover then so he was still lookin' good in 2017 when we happened upon him.

There was a convenience store attached.  I liked their sign/slogan...lol

Back on the road and our constant roadside companion views of fields of corn....

A granary with silos in the distance.....

The first sighting of a windmill from the interstate.......

The ride North on I-29 took us along the Missouri River on the Iowa side.

An abandoned Sapp Bros. sign in Iowa........

You could see Bluffs along the river here off in the distance........

Another big flag.....

Part of an art installation called "Paley's Odyssey" on the 24th St. bridge as you enter Council Bluffs from the East.  More info HERE.

As we got near the casino in Council Bluffs....

Free drinks were tempting but we were on a tight schedule. lolz

Yet another big ass flag.

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

And if you would have blinked you would have missed the "Welcome to Omaha/Kenefick Park" sign and trains.......

And then we were fighting rush hour traffic on Rte. 275 heading Northwest of Omaha and back to our view of fields of corn....

A rare billboard on this leg of the road.  Too bad we weren't going to be in town the end of July for that Scotty McCreery concert during the Washington County Fair.........*sad face*

About 45 minutes drive from Omaha we got to the hotel for the evening in Fremont NE.

A nice little place right off the interstate in small town Nebraska.

Our room was pretty nice too.

After unloading our luggage we needed to find a place to eat dinner.

This place was right in front of the hotel.....

We would have been smarter to have eaten at this Mel's Diner......

The diner proved that all that glitters is not gold.

The place was packed and the only reason I can think of why is because it's the only restaurant in town. lolz

Seriously, the prices were high.  We each got a salad and a sandwich.

Here is hubs trying to finish his meal and not laugh while I rolled my eyes and tried to chock down mine.

The "salad" was a plate of shredded iceberg lettuce like you'd put on a sub sandwich.....that's it!  Oh and salad dressing.  I didn't even try to eat my "salad".

I didn't want anything heavy so I ordered a tuna sandwich..........

Here is what was left after I ate half of my sandwich.  Honestly, there was MORE shredded lettuce on the sandwich than tuna(along with an anemic slice of tomato). The pile of lettuce on the plate was what I took out of the sandwich half I ate.  It was nearly impossible to remove the lettuce because they had mixed the lettuce in with the tuna and mayo before putting a glop of it on the bread!!  It was a lettuce sandwich with a little bit of tuna fish.  

And just what I wanted after being served a big plate of shredded lettuce"salad". 

It was just ridiculous for what we paid for this meal!

I wanted to tell then to "Kiss My F&*%^ Grits!" after being robbed for that dinner.

On the short walk back to the hotel I noticed this near where we parked our rental car.......

A nice decorative fir tree with it's top half missing.  ;-)

I guess some local yahoo sawed it off to use for their Christmas tree the previous December.

Petty theft at it's finest.....but not as fine as the theft going on in Mel's Diner next door. 8-)

Thus ends Part Four/Day Three of our Western Adventure.

Sluggy