A few things I learned on the road...

*Play song, "Everyday is a Winding Road" with this post

Along this road trip, I experienced America in a whole new way, and though I'd been through most of these states before, I don't have a strong recollection of how it was way back when. So here's a few things I thought of as we drove for about 6 days total.

Toads are much worse than geckos to step on (and yes, I've experienced both). You could not avoid these little guys at night as they were everywhere. And as you can see, not very scared of human hands or feet (Steve didn't even have to try to catch this one, or the littler one before it)

When you hear about places being flooded on the news, don't think it actually hits until you drive through it. And granted we only saw a little bit of it. I already mentioned that we had to add hours to our driving time because of the overflow of the Missouri River, actually had to to be diverted all the way down to Kansas because all of the smaller bridges were closed. Passed by entire exits under water, it really was unreal. 

I failed to actually get a picture myself, found this one online, but you get the idea

If you can see a statue of the Louis and Clark exhibition (in-between the car and the man in the white shirt), as you can probably guess, it's not suppose to be under water! This picture I did take

I've been some humid places before- Mexico, San Antonio and Germany is actually pretty humid (though it doesn't get very hot there usually). But nothing compared to the humidity of the so called "Mid West".  And heat is nothing without humidity. I really feel for people that have to live in it everyday. We only visited during record breaking heat and humidity, but at least we got to leave. I will take 100 degrees in dry Utah any day! But tromping around sight-seeing in downtown St. Louis when it was 105 and 100% humidity was torture, and I hope I never have to do it again!

Places without mountains need water towers, and I kid you not (please don't make fun of me for this), I really didn't think they existed anymore, don't ask why, because I don't know, I'm really not that dumb! Most places had the same old boring ones- white or grey. 

Some had at least had the town's name on them, and then there were a few that went above and beyond

Sorry, this picture was taken when driving and the sun was going down

Always need to make sure to double check the camera settings when stopping for impromptu photos. Especially when it is way too bright to see the picture properly on the tiny screen.

This would be the Colt's stadium, not that you can really tell since Steve decided to stand in front of the Coca-Cola sign (probably for me:)

When driving through the mid west, expect to see soybeans and corn as far as the eye can see. That is, fields and fields of them both- corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans, corn, corn, oh no wait, soybeans.......

Expect to see these as well.....

A lot of these!

Expect to see cool signs that you want to send home to your family. Sorry Lex, my camera phone was a little less than adequate to capture "Holt Road" with it's 5 second delay. But I did catch this one, and all the way back I searched for the billboard that said something along the lines of, "If you are forgetting words, who loved ones are, and where you live.... it may be a sign that there's something wrong" Well, I would hope that anyone I knew that that was happening to would probably be smart enough to know that there's is in fact something wrong :) *didn't ever find it though :(

It seems there really is no way to get away from road construction, it really is everywhere! Though I still think that Utah county takes the cake right now, with probably over 50% of it's roads being worked on right now (most of those being main roads too). But I really think that every state needs signs like this, then maybe, just maybe it would encourage people to actually slow down in work zones. Because apparently the doubled ticket fine isn't enough.

Some even had an added "14 years in jail"

Nothing compares to a storm in the mid west! We were a little worried we might hit a tornado even when we were going through Illinois the second time.... luckily the worst was, sheets of rain that came down through 3 states, and I mean like pouring (cats and dogs comes to mind), wicked strong, fast wind and lightning touching down on the ground a mere 25 feet from where we were driving (out in a corn field of course). But all in all, it really made for some amazing pictures!

Again, this one wasn't the best picture, but I had to try and capture the rainbow since I haven't seen one in a really long time!

When you see a town in Wyoming and think, "this is the first town I've seen in awhile, but we still have more than half a tank and everyone is asleep, so I'll just get gas at the next one I see." Well, you should have stopped. That way, you wouldn't have to literally coast into the town that was over 150 miles away and cost 30 cents more a gallon.... lesson learned and hopefully remembered there!

And just when it seems like you will never get home because this is all you see- never ending road!

Then you remember that this all would have been a lot worse and incredibly more boring without these two :)

Em and Sully (from Monster's Inc. in case you didn't know)

Thanks hon for doing most of the driving and enduring all the relentless stops and endless complaints from your significant other ;)