Our Adventure: Missouri

Today was the first real day to head west toward our destination in California. It took awhile to finish packing and loading and covering the small trailer that we're pulling, so we didn't get on the road until 11 AM.

We headed from the Ozarks up diagonally north west across the state, aiming for somewhere in the middle of Nebraska.

 Our three boys fit across the middle section of our Envoy. We usually have the older two in the back, but since J is in a booster now, they can be in the middle. I love having them closer and it means we can put more luggage in the back.

We made it through the capitol of Missouri, Jefferson City, just fine. I had made us a lunch but didn't pack it well--part was in the cooler, part in another box, Jojo's food in a separate bag... It was super hot and we didn't want to stop and melt while we fished out our lunch, so we decided to stop at Taco Bell in Columbia.

That's when our car overheated! Thankfully we were about a block away from a shop, so we pulled in. They agreed to look at our car and we went across the street to Taco Bell.

The news after lunch wasn't good. We needed a new fan gear something-or-other which would cost $600 and take 3 hours to install. Did I mention it was well over 100 degrees?

There was a Burger King about a block away, so we walked over there to have somewhere for the boys to play. They had a lot of fun, even though the play area's AC was down.

 The little guy got a lot of attention from his Daddy.

Ok, so I couldn't resist taking a few more of him. So stinking cute!

We finally got the call that the car was done. It was 5:30 before we were back on the road headed West.

Oh look! A barn! I managed to snap several barn pictures today, even from the passenger seat of a car headed down the highway!

I know it's summer, but seriously, it was so so hot! Here I caught the time and temp for posterity:

106* at 6:01 PM. Or, at 6:01 it was 106*.  

We turned north at Kansas City, MO as the sun was setting. We were headed into a storm, so we stopped about an hour north of Kansas City. Kinda frustrating to not even make it to Nebraska, but we'll make up the time in the next couple of days. We also kept reminding ourselves to be thankful that the car had problems in a city, not out in the country where we would have had to call a tow truck! We're also glad it was something that could be fixed relatively quickly.

He's a very basic map of our progress so far:

So there you have it! Tomorrow we hope to cross the whole state of Nebraska and get into Wyoming. We're headed to Yellowstone over the weekend. Have you had car troubles on a trip lately?