Road Trip

This past weekend we took a trip down to Kansas City to visit Miranda, Gary, and Linliey. The drive down was interesting, as it was our first time in the car with Henry for an extended period of time since he has been out of diapers. The first half of the trip went well, and we stopped in St. Joseph for a bathroom break and a 25 cent hotdog for Mike at a gas station called "Jesse James' Last Stand. " They lure you in with the 25 cent hotdogs, which Mike thinks is the coolest thing ever, even though the hotdogs look like something out of an autopsy. What is funny is that the
gas station has a cowboy theme, but was being run by two women of Indian descent wearing full Indian garb. Anyway, I digress. I make Henry sit on the potty in the semi-clean bathroom and he doesn't go. "Are you SURE you don't have to go?" I ask. "No Mommy, no pee right now." Okay.
So about 20 minutes down the road, a shout from the back, "Mommy, I GOOOO! I go pee!" We fly to the next exit, which is thankfully a relatively clean rest stop. He pees on the potty. He is proud. I am proud.
20 more minutes down the road. "Mommy, I GOOOOO! I poopin'! I GOOOOO!!!" I say to Mike, "Floor it!" We get to the next exit, which contains nothing but a rail yard, a closed Sinclair station, and what we think was a Phillips 66, although it could have been a meth lab. We pull into the Phillips, although the windows are so grungy and nasty they clearly haven't been washed since the late 1970's. I yank Henry out of the car and fly into the gas station. The clerk stops puffing on her cigarette long enough to point me to the restroom in the back. The restroom doubles as a storage closet, so when we walk in, there is a toilet, a tiny sink, various cleaning supplies, a mop, a plunger, and a dirty toilet brush perched on the back of the toilet. I seriously contemplate telling Henry to just poop his pants, but instead breathe through my mouth (at least the cigarette smoke smell overpowered the poop
smell in there) and get Henry up on the seat. Naturally, he cannot go. We get back out to the car, drive to Miranda's, where a clean potty awaits us. Henry promptly poops in his pants.
Anyway, the rest of the trip was much better. We went to the Union Station museum and had lunch at Fritz's Railroad Cafe in Crown Center, where our lunch was delivered to us via model train. I thought Henry was going to have a heart attack when he saw that engine coming with his grilled cheese.
The ride back was less eventful, although we did stop at a place that was a gas station/snack shop/antique mall/fireworks outlet, all in the same building. How's that for one-stop shopping? You can get your bottle rockets, nachos, Hummels, and diesel all at the same place. Gotta love Missouri!