Out West ~ Day 12, Travel

With few exceptions, our Out West adventure was plagued with road work. I’m not complaining for without the Interstate system, it would not have been possible for us to covered as much ground in our two-weeks of travel.

We departed Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Friday, August 20th, a date that marked our 43rd wedding anniversary. Our trip was planned as a celebration of three events, my retirement, my birthday and our wedding anniversary. As it worked out our anniversary and my birthday were travel days with no places of significance to visit.
Our goal for the day was to reach Columbia, Missouri and there spend the night.

Our route would take us south through Iowa and into Kansas City, MO and from there we drove east toward Columbia. We chose to stay in Columbia for no particular reason other than convenience. It would be about the greatest distance we cared to drive and it was relatively close to Waynesville, MO, the home of a friend of ours who for several years brought a youth group to Pontotoc each summer to work on a Habitat for Humanity house.

It became our practice to visit a welcome center in each state, though we missed a few, either because there was not one on the road we were traveling or else it was off the beaten path. And, of the several welcome centers we found, Barbara and I agreed the one in Iowa was the best. It was by no means the largest, but it was the most inviting. We particularly liked the floral landscapes that greeted us and the bench seating set in a canoe-shaped metal housing.

The welcome center’s theme was the Lewis and Clark expedition. Plaques with a copper appearance were hung on walls outside the building and near the entrance to commemorate the expedition. Large murals, on the order of 8’ by 12’ were housed inside at entrances to both restrooms. A beautiful tile mosaic of the Missouri River ran along the floor in the main section of the welcome center. And, were that not enough, the folks staffing the visitor center were perhaps the most cordial of all the welcome centers we visited. And, yes, if you’re wondering, we expressed our admiration of the facility to the staff and logged a comment on the guests’ register.

Other than the occasional construction delay, the day of driving went rather smoothly until we neared our destination of Columbia. Apparently a lot of folks work outside the city, perhaps in Kansas City, I really don’t know, but I know we crept along the last thirty or so miles of the day. To make matters worse, it was raining, and it was the heaviest rainstorm we drove through the entire trip.

I was pretty drained from all the driving and the rain. Thankfully the motel accommodations we better than expected. But, a friend had suggested a must-try pizza place named Shakespeare’s Pizza. It was about five minute drive from our motel, so we decided to celebrate our anniversary with a pizza.

As Columbia is a college town, I should have known better than to eat at a pizzeria. Was it ever noisy? I told somebody it was so noisy that if I wanted to say something to my wife I had to send a text message. Yes, it was that bad.
The college crowd was loud, but children ripping and romping through the dining area were equally as nerve-wracking. Things started to quiet down about the time we finished our meal at the same time the crowds were starting to thin out. With the pizza roughly average, as pizza goes, I can’t recommend this eatery to anyone over the age of fifty. But, if you like it loud, it’s the go-to place, in Columbia, Missouri.

The upside to the evening was it was our first wedding anniversary to have pizza!

Additional pics and comments at http://rrnews.org/Week2Day12