Day 3 - Monday, March 21 - St. Louis, IL to Hays, KS

Starting mileage:  77601 Starting time: 7:45 am
Ending mileage: 78136 Ending time: 4:45 pm
Travel mileage:  535 Travel time: 9:00 hours

It was 60 degrees and overcast this morning, going up to 70 before coming down to 50 by the time we arrived here.

After enjoying St. Louis-style BBQ last night, we thought we should try Kansas City-style BBQ in Kansas City and found Smokehouse BBQ a bit north of downtown. One thing quite different is the strong smoky flavor. Another is that since the ribs are smoked slowly with the sauce, more of the sauce flavor permeates the meat. It was very good.

Much of the area we passed through was rolling golden-brown prairie grass range land. We could see herds of cattle grazing. There were a few areas with wheat and hay being grow.

W passed through a huge wind farm with over 150 wind turbines. It was nice to see them all briskly turning in the wind. I found an interesting web site, the National Wind Turbine Data-Base that lists all wind turbines and wind farms in the US.

It rained off and on all afternoon until it got to Hays. Before Hays we saw many oil pump-jacks operating on both sides of the road with the heads bobbing up and down. This must be a good time for the people pumping oil.

We were surprised to see signs saying that I-70 was closed in Colorado but didn't know why. When we got to the hotel we discovered that there was 8" of snow with white-out conditions on I-70 just west of the border with Kansas. There is a blizzard warning for the area around our hotel with 3-7" of snow and 40-60 MPH wind.

We are staying at a Sleep Inn. $88.

Hilight of our trip today!




Day 3 route

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