Day #33 September 12, 2007

Day #33
Wednesday September 12, 2007

Monticello, IA to Oak Grove, MO
392 miles today (21,363 - 21,755)
7,274 miles total

17 states total

Not a very good day today. I woke up at 3AM very sick to my
stomach. I think the hamburger at J&P did NOT agree with me.
So I stayed up an hour and a half catching up on some blogging.
Slept till after 8AM, which really set me behind for the day. I was
still nauseated when I woke up. This was going to be an all
interstate day, and I just wasn’t looking forward to it.

I finally got on the road about 10, and it was clear and COLD.
I stayed cool all day long until nearly 3PM. I had been on I-80
west of Iowa City only a little bit, about 15 miles, but on the road
nearly an hour, when I called Natalie. She had called the night
before just as I was getting ready to leave J&P, and it was just
getting to be dusk. They had warned us of the deer, and I wanted
to get back to the motel before completely dark, so we didn’t get
to talk but a minute. She was in better spirits today, but was
missing me, and I was missing her. We talked for probably 20
minutes or more, and when we hung up, now I was really
“homesick” for the first time on the trip. I wasn’t feeling well
physically, now I was homesick, and I had hundreds of miles to
make up in the middle of the country. I was dreading it.

I feel like today I have hit a “wall” of some sort. It is a mental,
motivational, attitudinal wall. I have been on the road 33 days,
but gone from home 51 days, almost 2 months. I have a LOT
of country I still would like to see, but the miles, the weather and
the calendar are all pushing against me it seems. This is only
Wednesday, and I’ve only been out 3 days from my “KY pit stop”
so I have to give it a little more time.

I hit Des Moines late morning, so the rush hour was long past.
I turned south on I-35 and just endured miles and miles of
interstate. The air was cool, and I wore my winter gloves
(big cuffs over my jacket sleeves) until mid afternoon. The high
temp I saw was 65 degrees somewhere. As I crossed the
Missouri state line, I knew KC was not too terribly far away.
I reached Kansas City about 5:30 in the afternoon. At my last
gas stop in Kearney, about 25 miles northeast of KC, I decided I
would go east on I-70 to a KOA in Oak Grove, instead of going
west into Kansas all the way to Lawrence.

The day ended much better than it started. I hadn’t eaten
anything all day, but still wasn’t hungry. Every now and then
I’d get hit with a bit of nausea. I can hope and pray it was the
hamburger and not my CamelBak water bottle that has got my
stomach upside down. I am still dogged by the concerns of
distance, weather and seasons, but will trust that gets resolved
with some rest, reflection and prayer.