The Oregon Trail Day 1

We left a couple of hours later than expected, but still managed to make it to Hays, Kansas by the end of day one. According to Wikipedia:

"In the early days, Hays was a wild and lawless town, filled with saloons and dance halls. The legendary Wild Bill Hickok served as sheriff for a few months in 1869, but left town the next year after a brawl with some troopers from Fort Hays. Summing up her impression while her husband, George Custer, was encamped near Fort Hays, Elizabeth Custer said, "there was enough desperate history in that little town in one summer to make a whole library of dime novels." Between August of 1867 and December of 1873 there were over 30 homicides in and around Hays. Hays developed the reputation, which was well deserved, as one of the most violent towns on the Kansas Frontier."

However, nowadays, Hays seems very safe. It was basically one big strip of hotels and restaurants. We gorged ourselves at a Mexican restaurant before passing out at the Motel 6.

In our first day of driving we went though Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Topeka. 850 miles. Maybe 13 hours since we had left Brookville. Eastern Kansas was surprisingly pretty- home of the Flint Hills- http://www.kansasflinthills.travel/ Somehow, we managed to avoid bad weather for the most part. It was a little rainy in St. Louis, but that was it. The biggest threat to us were these giant poles that fell off of an RV just outside of St. Louis- they stretched across the whole width of the highway, so we couldn't avoid running over one of them... luckily no flat tires or anything.

Also, in St. Louis we started a daily lunchtime ritual- stopping at a Subway to use the restroom and gank mayonaise packets for our tuna salad sandwiches.

Picture Descriptions-
(I would click on each picture to enlarge it, because some of them are impossible to make out otherwise)
1. Our Toyota Camry Conestoga wagon, bike rack attached, packed and ready to go.
2. Leaving Ohio
3. Entering Illinois action shot
4. Entering Missouri action shot
5. St. Louis
6. Entering Kansas