In two days we made it from Youngstown, Ohio to Denver, Colorado. So this will be two trip blogs logged as one. Here we go, or, more accurately, there we were:

Day Two:

Frigid, and I mean really frigid, was the temp when we departed Youngstown early morning at 6am on Sunday. Crossed the fine state of Ohio and lunched at a Greek place in Indianapolis, to our surprise, at the exact hour that fanatical Colts supporters were furiously jockeying for parking spots and downing tall cans of beer. Not wearing blue and white, we kind of stuck out. But the convivial Greeks served us all the same. Good lunch, but loud with pre-game enthusiasm. Paid the check and bolted back to the highway.

Scurried southwest towards St. Louis and one thing we noticed as we crossed Ohio and Illinois was the abundance of jumbo-sized white crosses dotting the otherwise increasingly flat landscape, along with more than a fair number of billboards questioning travelers about where they would spend eternity. Um, as a mortal, I didn't really assume that eternity was actually an option...I blame my mediocre, state-funded public schooling.

Crossed the mighty Mississippi and made our way to the left-side of Missouri to stay with our friend, Erik, in his princely, professorial mansion at the edge of the crack district of Kansas City. Nice to catch up with him, and he treated us to a fantastic vegetarian feast. Slept well after our longest day of traveling west.

Day Three:

To our surprise, the Kansas folks had not only erected their very own monument to me (see photo), but also a vast number of white and imposing pointed structures akin to their Ohioan and Indianapolan brethren along their landscape; these, we assumed, were not dedicated to a Christian savior but to an ancient wind goddess. We found these to be pretty cool, as they were just about the only vertical structures to pepper the horizontal scape that is Kansas.

At this point it really started to feel like the West: ranches, open road, never-ending sky, huge Moon rising as the golden sun tucked herself behind the horizon.

Alas, we drove into greater Denver under darkness, so no sight of the mighty Rockies. Yet, the sea of metropolitan and suburban torches left us feeling like we were most certainly not in Kansas anymore.

Heading West,

Kevin and Emily