As I write this, I am sitting in a small, crappy motel called the Safari Inn in Limon, Colorado. It’s been a longish sort of day.

We left off at the Ark Encounter. Actually, there was one thing I forgot to mention. This was in their gift shop:

If that doesn’t just perfectly sum up the visitors to the Ark Encounter, I don’t know what does.

At any rate, I finally made it down to my motel near Mammoth Caves. I set my alarm, exhausted, and collapsed into bed. Side note: I really wish that phones had a feature that would be like “you have just set an alarm for 8 PM. Are you a dumbass and do you actually mean 8 AM? Tap here to confirm.” Suffice to say, I woke up late, panicked, threw all of my stuff haphazardly into TARS, and tore out of the parking lot. Google Maps told me that I would be arriving a full 10 minutes past my 9:30 start time – and recall, they were explicit about no late entries, and there were no other time slots available for the rest of the week. I’d basically detoured several hundred miles explicitly to see Mammoth Caves, and if I wasn’t able to get in, it would all be for nothing.

I broke about fourteen different traffic laws on my way to the park entrance, but still got trapped behind a park ranger going the speed limit, so only shaved a couple minutes off my arrival. As I drove, I came up with increasingly elaborate lies to tell the park rangers to try and bluff my way in. I admit that it did cross my mind to tell a partial truth and explain that my dad committed suicide recently, and when they called me on it, start pulling up evidence on my phone. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Joe, that’s pretty fucked up to use your dad’s suicide in that way,” and I kinda agree, except that’s exactly the type of person he was. He was an incredibly legalistic, uptight asshole in certain parts of his life, but had a complete lack of respect for authority, rules, and the law in basically every other part of his life. If an afterlife existed, and if he was gazing down (or up) at me, I’m fairly confident he’d be telling me to exploit the shit out of that.

Still, common sense prevailed, and I kept it simple: act dumb. Upon arrival, I sprinted down the walkway to the entrance. Turns out I was SUPPOSED to have a printed ticket from up top, but after proving I did in fact have a ticket, the ranger checked his watch (I was a full 20 minutes late at this point), gave me a wink, and ushered me in. Rule-breaking FTW!

Mammoth Caves were great. They don’t have the amazing stalactites / stalagmites the way Carlsbad Caverns do, but the caves themselves are enormous and the pictures don’t do them justice. Unfortunately, given COVID most of the caves were closed off to the public, so the walk through them was relatively short. Still, they are well worth visiting.

With that, I set off toward Kansas City.

Kentucky is a nice enough state, lots of rolling hills and green grass and horses everywhere. I even saw a German Baptist in the wild!

Not much else I can say about that very long and very boring drive.

For this next part to make sense, I should explain a bit about how I’ve been traveling. I haven’t been booking motels well in advance, I have rough plans about my traveling, but have kept it fairly loose in case I want to stop somewhere or see something random. When I have a general idea of where I need to stop (either in a city, or coming up on a city) I typically hop on my Expedia app and try to find a reasonably priced place to stay. This being a pandemic, it’s not hard to find cheap places to stay. I haven’t been to a single motel that has even approached 50% capacity.

Anyway, this place had a fairly cheap (~$60) Days Inn in Kansas City, that was fairly well reviewed, not really caring, I booked it, got there, and went to check in. As I’m waiting for the clerk to finish their stuff, a couple walks in behind me. I toss a glance over my shoulder. It’s a sixty-ish year old white guy with a little pep in his step and the “i’m about to get laid” twinkle in his eye, and a Latino woman in her mid-twenties looking generally unhappy and holding a bottle of liquor. The old white guy gives her a wink and says “get what you want from the vending machines, baby doll” and hands her a handful of quarters. I don’t like to pigeonhole people, but I can immediately tell that she’s a sex worker and he’s a john.

The front desk clerk explains that when I check out, I just need to come by the front desk, and they will “inspect my room” and then release the $50 deposit hold on my card. I should’ve just walked away then, but I went on with it.

The room was a dump – obviously – with a window blind that wouldn’t close all the way, so anyone walking by could see into my room, the smoke detector was doing a low battery chirp every thirty seconds, and my neighbors next door were screaming at each other so loudly that if I discovered the next morning there had been a murder-suicide in that room, I would have thought, “yeah, that tracks.” Also, the security latch was busted.

I posted on Facebook to see what people thought, and discovered that at least a few people are living vicariously through my adventures and just want the best story, which I respect, but I packed up my shit and got the fuck out of Dodge to a much nicer, more secure room on the fourth floor. I immediately got on Doordash and ordered BBQ from the only place open: Jack Stack BBQ. It was incredible.

This morning I woke up and set off for the second reason (after BBQ) I was traveling through Kansas City: The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

It’s a great little museum and well worth visiting if you’re a baseball fan. The Negro Leagues are an amazing, saddening, and generally unknown part of America’s National Pastime, largely due to the disgraceful attitudes towards integration before and after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. They don’t let you take pictures through most of the museum, otherwise I’d have a lot more pictures here.

After that, I hit up some more BBQ:

Arthur Bryant’s was ranked #5 on the best BBQ in Kansas City by a list that some assholes put together, so I felt pretty confident that I wasn’t being led astray. And I’m not. After just two meals, I feel pretty confident that Kansas City has the best BBQ on the planet. Admittedly, I’ve only tried South Carolina, Detroit, and Kansas City (I’ve heard that Texas fancies themselves a contender), but it’s pretty fucking good.

From there, it was just a long, long drive across Kansas, and eventually into Colorado. After I entered Colorado, I had one moment of terror; I had long since zoned out and was just driving and listening to a podcast. Suddenly, the low gas light flicked on; I had 25 miles left in the tank, and I was in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, after another ten minutes or so, I found a town with a gas station, and shortly afterward, arrived in Limon, where I am now.

Other thoughts:

I really, really hate these “safety” stickers that companies are using. (I didn’t even want Pizza Hut, but they are the only place open in this godforsaken town). I am not worried that the pizza delivery driver is going to open by box to cough on my fucking pizza. I AM rather worried that your workers aren’t bothering with basic mask requirements when they are making my pizza, but I don’t have a way to check on that shit.