After brunch in Boulder and a beautiful morning in Estes Park, my dad and I spent the afternoon back in Boulder. We visited the university, saw the Mork & Mindy house (thankfully I can say I’m too young for it to mean anything to me), and learned lots of random facts about the most educated city in the U.S. Before saying good-bye to Colorado, I thought I’d mention a few other places that I didn’t blog about…

On my way from Breckenridge to Denver, I had a chance to stop at Red Rocks. It’s a stunning concert venue outside of Denver that I hope to return to when someone special is playing.

In Denver, we visited the Broncos stadium. Alan misbehaved and kept babbling inappropriate phrases from The Hangover during our tour (he malfunctioned), and this was his last official road trip appearance as a result.

Back in Denver on our last night, we had dinner with my cousin and his girlfriend and that concluded our stay in Colorado.

We left very early in the morning and started our two day drive to St. Louis. Prior to this road trip, I had never been to Kansas or Missouri. Though I expected corn and farmland in Kansas, I did not realize just how boring the drive would be. We ate Twizzlers (a road trip must-have), I forced my dad to participate in Swahili lessons I had on my ipod, and we drove for hours. We finally stopped in some po-dunk town halfway to St. Louis, and asked our hotel for dinner recommendations. We had two restaurant options- a restaurant located in the motel across the street or a steakhouse just up the road. We opted for the steakhouse. We pulled into a mostly empty parking lot, right next to a ‘Just Married’ car. I figured it was someone who had recently returned from their honeymoon and had yet to wash off the wedding evidence. Wrong. We walk in and are seated right next to the bride, groom, and the bride’s father.  Yes, this is what defined small town Kansas for me. We left po-dunk Kansas before sunrise, and it was a beautiful sunrise along the highway. I wish I could tell you more about Kansas, but there just wasn’t a whole lot going on. As we were approaching Topeka, I got slightly excited that we might see civilization in Kansas. I’m not sure if there’s just nothing going on near the interstate, but if you blink, you will miss it. I’m convinced that the population of Kansas is five. (Okay so we saw some form of life in Kansas City, but if we didn’t count that, the state would seem abandoned). We stopped on the outskirts of St. Louis for an evening in a historic little town and a bit of gambling. And so begins the adventures of Missouri and the last official stop of my U.S. road trip.