Arizona 2024: Day 3: Springfield, MO: No MO Hick

Cracker Barrel has been very, very good to us. Despite being rather close to the highway, we slept pretty darn well. The forecasted storms did not occur overnight. Bit of a pity as they would have obfuscated the road noise a bit. We were both of relatively early. I hit the road for my walk through the neighbourhood near the Cracker Barrel. I went a bit slower than usual as I tweaked my knee again last night. That does not mean I am a tweaker. Nor am I a twerker.

Walk was acceptable. I did pass houses with nice signs on them like “Asshole’s Garage” and “Red Neck Shed”. If I had to guess who they vote for, it might be an easy guess. I did not pass much of interest so this butcher wins as the most interesting thing.

We hit the road around 0900 and soon met a time change and some rain. The rain was not too heavy and we only saw a bit of lightning. We stopped at some kind of home discount store to solve the forgotten blanket issue. I had joked that I would eat my left over fusion caesar salad unless we were right near a Sonic. Gotta love that Sonic Boom. Look just in the distance, around 115 meters away, a Sonic! Did I go? Nope. Meal two of caesar salad it was. Foreshadowing a bit, but meal 3 will likely be the last!

We stopped at few rest areas on our way to Springfield. At one of them, there were 7 small sandwiches strewn across the lawn. What cult does this? The squirrels and birds did not want them as they were perfectly intact. Amy didn’t even seem interested. Maybe that is why the cult dropped them in their carefully arranged cult symbol, somewhat similar to a truncated ampersand. Hey, why does the ampersand get such a cool name and the “at sign” is simply the “at sign”. Seems rather elitist for the old ampersand.

We went through St Louis and this time we took the route close to The Arch. This is the best shot we could get from the van. One day we shall stop and have a closer look.

We did not stop at Missouri Hick BBQ. We have made a tradition of stopping there (it is in Cuba, MO, a slight detour from the main highway)

Traffic was pretty light. Our target campground was Cook’s RV Park. But, just 5 miles before the campground and right off the highway is the newest Buc-ee’s. I think we did it! We had a jolly old time filling up with $3.25 USD per gallon of gas. Then we marched into the store, loaded up on Buc-ee’s fan boy merch and grabbed a pail of Buc-ee’s own recipe cola and some meat sandwiches and we hit the road. Did we get the Beaver Bites? You will have to wait and see. Those Buc-ee’s sandwiches are pretty darn good. Given they are only 5 miles from here, maybe an early morning return trip before heading west is in order!

Post Buc-ee’s we headed to the campground. The sign out front did not say “We’d like to have you for dinner” so we continued in. We opted for a paid campsite tonight as we really needed showers and those require electricity, water in, and water out of the van. This is an acceptable small RV campground with really good google reviews. The showers are a solid 8/10. Only thing keeping them from being a 9/10 is that there is no easy spot to hang your towel near the shower area. The showers are completely private with locking doors. Based on my review, Mrs Milddogs ventured in and also gave them two thumbs up – or whatever her scale is that indicates acceptance.

Mrs Milddogs spent some time reengineering the layers on her bed. Note that our van has two twin(ish) beds. No trouble in paradise, it’s just a nice functional design. Once the redesign was complete, I spent some time trying to find the stuff sack for her previous cover. Well, that was not to be found so I spent about 30 minutes trying to stuff it into a way too small packing cube. Once I had torn a few things and elevated my heart rate into zone 3, I figured I better stop. Re-arranged the packing cube contents and we now have a contained former bed cover. Let’s hope we don’t need it, cause I did not sew up that tear I put in it. I’ll do that some quiet day.

There is some cold weather heading our way. Tomorrow should be OK and we will likely parking lot camp in Oklahoma City. Then, after five days of long drives in a row, we plan to stay at one park for 3 days. Fingers crossed that it works out.

L&ter!