On the road with Spencer

After leaving Fort Leavenworth, Spencer let us know that he would join us on our roadtrip. We had to pass LFK anyway going East, so we decided to camp at Clinton Lake and to pick him up the next morning.

After leaving Fort Leavenworts, Spencer let us know that he would join us on our roadtrip. We had to pass LFK anyway going East, so we decided to camp at Clinton Lake and to pick him up the next morning.his girlfriend McKenzie and his family at the Walnut campground. They invited us over for a bbq and we sat by the fire, listened to guitar music and chatted the whole night. It did get pretty late.

Shooting Range

The next morning we picked up Spencer and left Lawrence to go to Topeka to meet up with Jennifer (a good friend of Ricks cousin Ana) who would take us shooting! Us? Shooting? A gun?

We drove to a close by shooting range where she explained us how to hold a gun, how to load it and how to shoot at a target (you shoot at a kind of a dartboard). All of us got headphones to protect our ears as the noises on a shooting range are just super loud. Every time I heard someone shooting it scared the *peep* out of me (well, at least of me).

Shooting was scary and exciting at the same time. Rick and Spencer just went for it and it took me a couple of minutes just to shoot one bullet while keep breathing.

The riffle was too much for me though ... I barely dared to hold it as I was afraid to shoot someone coincidentally. Again, Rick and Spencer just went for it.

It was a very cool experience but still weird for us. We are just not used to see, hear or even hold a gun. Thanks Jennifer for taking us and teaching us the basics of the shooting sport.

St. Louis (Missouri)

Spencer chose the first location. St. Louis in Missouri. He contacted one of his dad's friends whom booked a room for us in the Holiday Inn for the next two days. What a great gesture! Someone just booked a room for us so we could stay there for free. Unbelievable! Our adventure with the three of us had really started and it did start well.

We took an Uber after checking in and headed direction the Budweiser Brewery. After a nice lunch in that nice area (getting there took us a while as we first went to a different area ...LOL)

We took a Brewery tour. It was nice to see how they make beer over there and to taste some of it.

At the brewery the security guard gave us some tips about what to do in St. Louis and warned us about that city. St. Louis is the second most dangerous cities in the States! We had to be careful and not wander around at night by ourselves. We did not, but still had a fantastic night out, meeting Ned the lifeguard and Steve the musician at the Oyster Bar.

The night ended in driving through the drive thru at the White Temple in a taxi ordering 20 hamburgers (we went from A to B in Ubers). The taxi driver helped us eating the burgers but we simply ordered too many.

The next morning we slept in and visited the Arch "the Gateway to the West", the stadium, walked through the city and had a sundowner at a very fancy rooftop bar where we met Billy and Billy. A father and his son biking the route 66, very cool dudes.

We survived St. Louis pretty well.

Chicago / Illinois

Do you remember the serie "Married with children"? I did not know that it takes place in Chicago in Illinois, the next big city we headed to.

We booked a hostel in Chicago and watched the Kansas City Chiefs of which Spencer is a fan of.

They surprisingly won! That night my friend Florian, whom I know from my studies back in Cologne, joined to watch football with us or better said joined to catch up with us. It was great to see him. He is now married and has two children. How time flies.

Our second day in Chicago we spent mainly on sightseeing and walking through the Millenniumpark and over the pier. It was a very grey and cold day but we all enjoyed wandering through that beautiful city.

Holland / Michigan

Holland was already kind of on our list when we entered the States. We saw it on a travel program. It is a small entertainment park that is a copy of an old Dutch village. When we arrived we all had to laugh as it is a tiny park with some small Dutch houses. They have a Reuzenrad, a Zweefmolen, cheese tasting, cows, goats, chickens and the Klompendans. It was hilarious. I did wonder though whether Spencer regretted coming with us at the point, or rather would have stayed at home. Sorry Spencer for taking you there haha.

After that great "Dutch" experience we found a very nice campground (Whispering Surf Campground) further up North between two lakes (Lake Michigan and Bass Lake) where we watched a perfect sunset on the dunes and enjoyed some Dutch cheese by the campfire.

Leland / Michigan

After Holland and the Whispering Surf we took the M22 up North towards Leland. Taking that road was a great drive.

They are lakes everywhere (with blue water like we had only seen in Asia) and thanks to the fall, the colors of the trees had already started to change to red, yellow and orange. We stopped in Leland at Fish Town and had a sandwich at the historic fish harbor.

In the evening we found a very, very, veeerrrry tidy campsite (I bet it is the tidiest campsite in the whole of the US).

It looked like a golf resort and it did actually have a driving range on it where we hit some balls (tried to...Spencer did, we tried to).

Traverse City / Michigan

After having spent the night by the lake we decided to stay a couple of more days in Michigan. We drove to Traverse City in the morning and went on a small hike. Well, as most of the trails in the recreational park were closed and the park was right next to the rails and a motorway it was not one of the best hikes we did, but it was nice to walk outside.

In order to make it up for the trail we took Amy and drove her up the small Mission Peninsula. They are Vineyards and fruit farms everywhere and you have gorgeous views of lake Michigan. After we visited the light tower we did some wine tastings and just enjoyed the views.

That was a great day!

National Forest

We spent two nights at campsite in the middle of the National Forest, close to Traverse City, that Rick found by coincidence. Besides us there was no one except the camp hosts! We did a two hours hike there and had some delicious burgers for dinner.

On the second day, after a real American Monster breakfast, we rented kayaks and floated down a wide river. That was one of the chillest and most relaxing outdoor activities we have ever done. We ended that day with a great fire (finally we got good wood) and had some nice pasta. :) We had no idea that that evening would be our last camping evening and even our last night in Amy :(.

Getting stuck in Flint/Detroit and losing Amy

We got into some problems with Amy already a few days before. She refused to start a couple of times and the weird thing was that she did start in the morning, after not having moved for hours, but refused to start when we had a short gas station break after a longer drive. On our way to Ohio, where we wanted to stay one night, she did not start at all after our lunch break. The engine just did not make a sound anymore. Someone helped us jump starting her and we decided to take her to a garage. They checked her and put a new starter in. Great, we were on the road again!

After only one hour of driving we heard a loud noise like we had lost something of the engine (we first thought the tire exploded) and she did not accelerate anymore. Rick pulled her off to the shoulder and slowly drove towards the next exit: Flint.

We stopped in front of a garage, looked for a close by hotel (there were only motels though) and walked for half an hour (taking only our valuables) until we found an area with some motels. While walking we did realize that the neighborhood we walked through was not the best. That already scared me.

We arrived at the Hometown Inn where they had rooms for 39,90 Dollars a night. Not knowing what kind of place we ran into, we took a room, but on our way to that room some weird people crossed our way. The rooms itself was dark, smelled like weed and everything was broken. We had booked a room in a crack motel ("Crack Inn"). I panicked, Rick and Spencer did not look too happy and we all did not want to spend one more minute in there, in any other motel around or even in Flint. But we had to! We cancelled the room and went to the best looking motel we could find around and stayed the night there (had pizza around the corner and some drinks IN the room).

The next morning we took an Uber to the place where we had left Amy. We were pleasantly surprised by our nice hippie Uber Dude.

Thanks to Ana, whom we asked for help too late, we had learned that we needed to call AAA first, let us tow to an AAA certified garage and they would help us out. So we did.

The AAA garage checked her out, first diagnosed an old battery (short relief) and then saw that an important piece of the transmission pipe thing had melted. Transmission = expensive and could take days! I started crying as I knew that could and would be the end of us and Amy. Shipping that piece to Flint to repair her could take up to a week, the costs were manageable though, but we did not have the time nor the will to wait. Staying another week in Flint was just no option at all for us (+ the costs for hotels and food). We took a hard decision: We would sell her to a wrecking company (Thanks Spencer for calling all those companies) and would get at least a couple of hundred dollars back. The wrecking company confirmed to be there within 30 minutes. We unloaded the car as quick as possible, separated all of our things and decided what to throw away or give to the garage people in 30 minutes. Then the wrecking company came and took Amy :(.

It all happened so quick :(. It was heartbreaking seeing her being towed away after we had such a great adventure with her.

The garage did not charge us for checking the van which was a very sweet gesture. Weirdest garage through: we were the only customers there, there were 5 guys not doing anything the whole time when we were there, except working in the yard, and the owner still did not want set appointment (people kept calling a few times) before 1 pm cause they were too busy. LOL.

Being a premium member of AAA (Thanks again Ana) we got a rental car afterwards and drove down to Maryland in one time (600 miles akak 960 km). No more roadtrip for us.

Spencer will stay with us a couple more days, we will check out Washington DC together and then he will leave us to go back to LFK for some more travelling. Meanwhile we enjoy great food, a great house and a great bed at Ana's place in Havre de Grace.

It will be weird not to travel with him anymore.