Day 1: From Carbondale to Boonville.

Good lord but that A&W root beer was sweet. Most of that is going down the drain. I’m in the Comfort Inn in Boonville, Missouri. I’d hoped to make it to Independence today, but I hit the wall in Boonville. I didn’t sleep last night, and today I drove several hours after dropping off the dogs at the kennel.

Utter exhaustion led to utter lack of will power, which in turn led me to order fries with my fast-food sandwich for the first time in…well, I don’t know when. And I drove three miles into town to get the root beer, because who knew that A&W restaurants still existed? But I can’t drink things that sweet anymore, it seems. This town is built on hills; it must be close to the Missouri River. (Later confirmed that yes, it is.) Even the drive-throughs are hilly. I noticed in passing that Yummy’s Donut Shop sells kolaches. I’ve forgotten what those are. Must Google it, since nobody in Carbondale, to my knowledge, sells kolaches. Are they Polish? (No, Czech.)

Nothing of note appeared on this leg of the journey, with the exception of two blue state highway signs between Wentzville and Columbia that said “ATTRACTION EXIT XX” but then had nothing listed underneath. Did these benighted places once have an attraction which then eroded, got up and left, or in some other way disappeared, or is the Missouri Department of Transportation unduly optimistic that an attraction will someday appear in the vicinity of these exits?

The only other notable thing is that I spent a good chunk of change before I even crossed the Mississippi by stopping at a Best Buy in Fairview Heights to purchase the iPad Mini 2 and keyboard folio on which I’m writing this, under the illusion that I will actually document this trip. My other excuse was to use the iPad to serve as a backup for the photos that I will ostensibly take. So far I’ve only taken some iPhone photos of the right front end of some monstrous pickup or SUV that parked next to me at the Boonville rest stop. (See example above, which I like despite its technical flaws.)

Some of my vacation photos may be a little different from the norm.