Through the night... and 4 states

So the end of day 3 worked out (I'll give you the long story in a minute).  We pulled out of Ohio at 4:00 p.m., drove through Indiana and Illinois and into Missouri.  We arrived to camp at 1:30 a.m. and there were times when I felt like I was driving through a black wasteland - nothing but darkness and long, straight roads.  Someone once told me that you are generally driving with tractor trailers on the interstates in the Mid-west.  They were right.

Lisa was able to get a picture of the Indiana sign - she's been a little mad at herself because she missed pictures of the New Jersey, West Virginia & Ohio signs.  Of course, in the dark pictures of the Indiana and Missouri signs were impossible...

So what I didn't share from our tire blow out issue in PA was that in my haste to get us off of the turnpike, I stripped the end of one of the studs so I was running with four lugs instead of five.  They do it in NASCAR sometimes (as Julie well knows) so I was OK with it for that short haul, but while we were waiting for the Suburban to get fixed, I made some phone calls to RV repair shops.  None of them would touch it, but I found a tractor trailer repair place that would and they were pretty much on our route here to Missouri.  The agony was really in waiting for the Suburban - it was finally being repaired at 11:00 and they were hoping to have it done by 2:00.  We got the call at 2:45 so getting all the bikes mounted and the trailer loaded by 4:00 is a record.  The guy that could fix the stripped stud closed at 5:00 so we got there at 4:30 not really knowing if he was going to have time to fix.  The owner turned out to be an awesome guy - when I asked him if he had the time to fix it, he answered with, "us camper guys have to stick together!"  10 minutes, $5 and three beers out of the fridge later and we were on the road.  Turns out that they just needed to, "chase the threads" instead of replacing the entire stud.  That's good fortune and we needed it!  That's why I love camper folk - pretty giving people and fun to be around.

So we're about to hook up and leave our campsite here in Columbia, MO.  Going to hit the University of Missouri which is right up the road and then on to somewhere in Kansas.