Tuesday, June 17th: Day 4

Last night I got quite a bad nosebleed, luckily I was not yet asleep and was able to grab some tissues to stem the flow. Unfortunately, this was after I has already lost quite a lot of blood on the pillows. After feeling a little guilty I went to sleep. This morning I debated letting the front desk know that they would find carnage when they went to clean, but the moment we left the room a small woman went rushing in with an armful of clean linens. It seemed a bit too suspicious to yell, "No wait! Don't go in there, I can explain." So I simply walked away quickly.
There was an urn of coffee in the front office so as I went to deposit our room keys I decided to snag a cup. Once I had concocted my caffeine to my liking, I reached for a lid only to find that, in the numerous variety of lids available, there was not one that fit. Not wanting to drive around with an open cup of scalding beverage, I turned and sheepishly placed the styrofoam container in the trash. We will never be returning to this establishment.
Today we drove through Oklahoma City, which was really quite nice. Following this we passed through Kansas and saw some very idealistic pastoral scenes. There was either an abundance of swampy lands in Kansas, or flooding in the forested areas to the sides of the road where many trees seemed to be half-submerged. After passing many pleasant little towns we crossed the border into Missouri. The one word I can think of to describe the so called "Show Me State" is porn. The moment we passed from the relatively quaint roads of Kansas we were bombarded with signs alerting us to upcoming adult entertainment stores/establishments/arcades. To be honest I was quite curious about what would constitute an 'adult arcade', but was too worried of the possible answers to stop and see. The irony is that there were five or six signs for each of these curiosities, but seeing the advertising for the last several miles I would be disappointed by the small shacks that looked perhaps like storage sheds with only spray paint and large arrows to indicate that this was indeed the over hyped location. Needless to say, we did not stop until we reached our destination; Saint James, MO.