The Bus Ride Home

Greyhound is ridiculous. This is me. This is me after two days on freaking Greyhound.
Stuck in Kansas City, Missouri. Luckily, I was in good company. May I present Samantha and Josh. Two awesome kids from Portland, Oregon. Man do they have stories to tell.
We were together for the first two days of the journey from the twin cities down to Salt Lake City, Utah.
They've invited me up to Oregon to spy out a beach with a shipwreck you can climb on.
Can you say awesome? I'm so there.

































We did pass some really awesome windmills in the construction phase. Anyone who's driven highway five, or through the southwest (hey Ennis!), or even just seen some of my watercolor paintings, knows my preoccupation with these beauties. Apparently the turbines are 150 feet in length and the generators in the middle are the size of a greyhound bus. They look so small from far away. But up close, these things are huge...













And here I saw a train going through the salt flats of the Great Salt Lakes in Utah.

The Mississippi and the Gateway to the West

Today I went up to the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. It was incredible. Even just standing next to the towering stainless steel monument inspires awe and a bit of sun-blindedness. The simple design and the way it reflects the sun makes it the perfect symbolic gateway to the land believed to be the answer to everyone's dreams... It's a monument to Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, though I don't know how many people actually know that.
The arch stands in the middle of a grassy park, but I saw the pictures. They tore down many of the old brick buildings along the waterfront (which were probably the original city) to make way for this glamorous silver tower. It's sad to me because of all the history that was lost. All they saved of the area was a church and the old courthouse from the 1800s where they tried the Dred Scott case. Don't get me wrong, the arch is amazing, and it was loads of fun to get into those little pods that make up the tram to the top and watch the spiral staircases out the tiny windows that let you see the interior structure. And the view from both sides of the observation deck are amazing. The land is so flat you can see forever in either direction. On one side you have the Mississippi River and on the opposite bank is Illinois. On the other side, behind the turquoise dome of the Old Courthouse, St. Louis stretches out into the horizon. It really is a big city. Or rather, several clusters of sky scrapers linked together by corridors of low end housing. 630 feet at the apex allows for some pretty breath-taking views.

After we left the gateway behind we drove through Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee. While passing a lake in Kentucky I noticed some trees along the banks that looked like they were wrapped in cotton candy... Then I realized that the gauzy substance was spider-web. Being arachnophobic, this did not sit well at all and I proceeded to be very glad I was in a moving car.

At any rate, I got to Nashville without being eaten by giant bird-catching spiders, and am now enjoying the company of my friend Oleg who I first met on my first jaunt around this country in a similar manner to this. Though I'd actually known him online for a while before meeting him in person. I met him because I commented on his website.
So now I am here and have plans to run around Nashville tomorrow, looking at some museums and apparently learning to shoot (not just guns, but infrared cameras as well).

On a side note, the pictures in the Adventures of the Water Tower Robot post are in reverse order to how I meant them. But I'm too lazy to change the order now, so look at them in whatever order you like.

Where Moonbeams Fall To Earth

Today I walked around Kansas City, Missouri much of the day. It was sunny and balmy, and the whole place seemed incredibly green after the last few days of desert and prairie.
This city apparently was designed to emulate the grandeur of European cities. It was built with large tree-lined boulevards and a plaza built to resemble Seville, Spain. It also has the most fountains of any city with the notable exception of Rome. Quite the feat for a heartland city in the US.
Near the geographic center of the continental US, this city really spans the border of Kansas and Missouri, bringing the people to a clashing, like the saying "the wrong side of the tracks". Many of the Kansas side folk seem to have a distinctly holier than thou air towards their Missouri neighbors. Unfortunate. But the University campus is beautiful. And the students seemed friendly, and much less white bread than I've seen in a while.
I spent some time in a cafe called Muddy's. It was pretty comfy. Right across the street from the campus, it was dark inside and full of students. It also had tables under the awning outside for those of us who preferred the sunlight.
Driving through the different parts of the city was more like visiting separate cities in that every part I saw was so very different in aesthetic and population. The plaza looked Spanish and was full of shoppers and war protesters carrying signs saying things like "If you're pro-life you can't be pro-war" and "Oil Royalty = Pilate, Bush Inc = Herod, All Innocent Dead = Jesus... You = ?". The campus cafe was dark and hip and full of clusters of students around laptops, it not being late in the semester enough for books. The WWI memorial was huge and white and had a crowd of people with red white and blue tents and long-tailed trick kites crowded around old looking army vehicles. Many of these people were in various service uniforms, glaring at me in my bright red spaghetti strapped tank top. The Old Kansas City center was brick, well kept, and empty. All of the neighborhoods seemed so disconnected, far apart and different.
Ennis spent eight years living here, so he was able to be a good tour guide with a lot of interesting facts and history.

Tomorrow we'll be spending the morning in St. Louis, climbing the Archway to the West and getting breakfast at a waffle house. Then We'll be headed for Tennessee where I'll be staying with Oleg for a few days. He's actually gotten me a ticket to NYC so that I can still connect with the contacts I have there and in Cleveland. I'm pretty excited about the whole trip. The flight is nice cause it allows me more time with some Nashville friends, but still, I'll miss the Atlantic seaboard this trip now. Oh well, there's always next trip. After NYC I hope to keep my feet on the ground so I can enjoy as much of the country as possible.

By the way, if you guys think I'm on a wild adventure, you should check these people out! They're pretty awesome, huh? I wish I could hook up with them. I wish I had a valid passport still... I should fix that as soon as I get back...

And now, for the continued adventures of Irwin's cloud robot: