Divas in Distress Part II: The Next Morning

Molly: Whew! What a night.  I am glad that Anne & I are still alive.  This morning we are ready to ditch this hotel/city, but we thought we would give you our photos & the real story from yesterday first.  I just need to say, that before you read this, there are two versions to every story; and mine is definitely the correct one!  This first photo above and to the right is leaving Nashville EARLY yesterday morning.  Our day only got more eventful--but Nashville is beautiful in the morning!

Our day continued to be ridiculously boring until we got to St. Louis.  We were VERY excited about seeing the St. Louis Arch, and it was a pretty morning!  At this point, Anne leans over and says "We've eaten two granola bars.  This is good, it means the car is getting less packed down."  Fail.  We are still squished together like two sardines.

After St. Louis, we drove into Kansas City, Missouri (see above.)  OK, this is where the story gets good.  We are using Triple A maps, which have been failing epically all day, and so we're enjoying the scenery and Mom & I are chatting, and suddenly we are kind of far into Kansas!  (Note: we were never supposed to be in Kansas.)  So, Mom looks over and says "Kansas, Molly, check the map, are we supposed to be in Kansas?"  With my excellent map reading skills, I checked and sure enough, Mom missed the turn.  Silly Mom.  Luckily, with my excellent problem-solving skills, I used the navigation on my phone and my super duper sense of direction and got us safely back into Iowa.  Mom never even thanked me. 

This is what we saw in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.  Pretty? Yes.  Boring? Yes.  The same? Yes.  How's a girl to know which state she is in?  Exactly.  She can't.  So that's why it's not all Mom's fault that we were lost.  This is also where I said, "Aren't you glad we aren't on the Oregon Trail?"  (I love the Oregon Trail, it was my favorite computer game in 4th grade so I like Oregon Trail trivia.) I informed Mother that it would have taken us weeks just to get to Kansas if we were on the Oregon Trail.  She replied "If we were on the Oregon Trail, I would have eaten you by now."  Now, where is the child services when you need them?  For the record, we're having an amazing time and I have never laughed this hard!

We finally reached Nebraska and we think that they maybe need to change their slogan.  We ended up eating at a sketch Outback Steakhouse because we didn't want to go more than 30 feet away from our hotel after our scenic tour of Omaha.  Today is going to be quite an adventure.  Diva Number One has been patiently waiting for the computer, so I am going to give her a turn now!

Anne: Where is the Grey Goose? It's 7 a.m., not too early after yesterday and last night...Anyway, here is MY version of yesterday. We are tooling along listening to whatever music we can find on the radio because you-know-who has forgotten her ipod cable. Finally, we found a Pilot and bought one so we could have some decent music when she wasn't talking. Okay, here is the first funny thing she said. "Wow, this is just not working trying to sleep in this car." This was after she woke herself up snoring. It was the first of three naps she had on the way...all for someone who swears she didn't sleep a wink. But that didn't have anything to do with why we were lost.

Molly has been fired as the navigator. Day One and she's jobless. This is what happened: We are into the sixth, maybe seventh hour on the road. I look up and what jumps out at me? A "Welcome to Kansas" sign. I look at Molly and say, "Molly were we suppose to go through Kansas?" You should only have seen her deer-in-the-headlight look. It was then that I realized she couldn't read a map! Our first SUV had Neverlost in it, but when we upgraded to a larger vehicle because, well you know, because someone had too much stuff, it got left off of the Hertz order. Michael did suggest we take Sarah Riley's Garmin, but I said no because we had maps and the AAA guide and a GPS on our phone. Oh, what a mistake. A map is of no use if the navigator doesn't know what to do with it except doodle on it. Anyway, back to the story...We finally get out of Kansas and get to Omaha. It's worse than the culture shock Molly had at the Wal-Mart in Greenville, AL several years ago.

Anyway, we make it to our hotel, which looks very nice on the outside except that it has recently been constructed out of a cornfield. Probably last week. We asked the desk clerk where in Omaha we could find a good steak. He didn't know. That should have been a sign. But we weren't looking for signs since we were tired and had been on the road 12 hours. So we get to our room with the noxious odor, which we have previously reported, and decide we will go look for another place to lay our weary heads. OMG. We were in downtown Omaha, which is really very nice, but we pulled up next to a man driving a 1960s station wagon with a space ship on a trailer. It was very nice, made with aluminum foil and silver paint and some kind of plastic bubble. But the scary part was that this was obviously someone who hunted UFO's for a living because he had a UFO tracker and a serial number printed on the side of said station wagon. I was scared if we took a picture, he might nuke us. But if we run into him today, I'm going to risk it. Anyway, we decided that the hotel we had might be better than another unknown so we ended up staying the night. We slept better after we determined the scratching noises were not mice, but the air conditioner. Of course, the toilet backed up in the night and the plunger they gave me to fix it was broken. So...we are out of here just as soon as we can. We have hogged their computer as long as allowed. Now we are off to find a Best Buy in Lincoln to get Molly more computer stuff. I will say this is the first thing she has needed that can't be replaced at the Nordstrom in Seattle. Day Two is a straight shot to the next stop in Cheyenne except that you-know-who wants to find a ghost town and see the biggest postage stamp in the world. God help us!

We'll update tonight from Cheyenne!  We love getting y'alls comments!  We also love updating it, we use the blog as a threat to each other, "if you say that again...i'll put it in the blog!" I think it keeps us from premature death by each other.  Leave us comments!

xoxo,

Anne & Molly