Friday, September 21, 2012

Day 9/60: Lawrence to St. Louis

Monday, 9/17:  287 mi, I-70

We departed Lawrence at 9:30. Again the temperature was in the low 70's and the sky was overcast. The scenery was unremarkable. We had lunch at Wendy's in Columbia, Missouri.

All four times we have visited St. Louis we have stayed at the same property, though it is always under a different management, and it has a history of trouble with the AC system. This time the battery in the control unit was out and had to be replaced right away. Even at that, only the fan ever worked. Fortunately the weather was neither hot nor cold. We did have an exceptionally large room with some nice amenities, but maintenance was poor; one of the bedside lamps was broken, for instance.

When we finally got settled in our room, we walked down to Maryland Avenue to the Starbucks store. Within a few minutes, there was a thunderstorm. We had our umbrellas, but our feet and legs and shoulders got sopping. Later we realized that the locals were standing under awnings or inside doors until the downpour stopped. Starbucks was crowded and the air conditioning was on max. We bounced out of there and across the street to a private, and eccentric, coffee house. Our lattes were luke warm. When I took them back, the barrista said, “Oh, sometimes the steamer messes up,” and made us two hot ones. The place was noisy with rackety rock music and mothers with active toddlers.

After that, Dan went on to have dinner at a Thai restaurant. I stayed in and worked on my blog.

We had a wakeful night. Dan's side of the bed sagged so bad that an aching back awoke him. We fooled around with various computer tasks for a couple hours, then we traded sides of the bed and got back to sleep. The building makes a lot of noises.









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