After much planning and some unanticipated delays, the June road trip now underway.  I had to push off the start of the trip by about a week due to an unforeseen dental issue that couldn’t wait.  At my regular 6 month check-up (which was 3 days before the start of my trip) an x-ray showed some serious decay below the gum and bone in one of my upper molars.  My dentist was doubtful that tooth could be saved and was concerned it could cause me problems.  He suggested I have the tooth extracted before my trip so it wouldn’t cause me any problems and it would have time to heal while I was away until I could have either a bridge or implant put in.

I hate it when health issues flares up.  They always seem to present themselves at the least opportune time.  But, I believe it’s best to deal with them right away.  So I made a hasty appointment with an oral surgeon to have it pulled.  Within four days and $240 later the tooth was gone.  Luckily it was a straight forward extraction that started to heal pretty quickly.  I took an extra few days to make sure there were no problems and headed out.  

I should say we headed out.  While dealing the tooth issue, I asked my youngest son if he would be interested in joining me on this trip.  Cav is getting ready to go back to school and re-enter the job market, but he had no plans or obligations during June.  I figured this would be a good chance for a memorable father son experience and the opportunity with our schedules may never again be available.  Cav thought about it and said sure.  I was so glad he decided to come along.

So, we re-adjusted the schedule and changed some destinations to account for the one week delay and headed out on June 1^st.  During the winter and spring, while on our southwest road trip, I had driven the RV just about every day and was very comfortable with it.  But after being parked for about 6 weeks, it took a couple hours to get use to driving the beast again.

We had an uneventful drive south thru Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.  We boon docked the first night at a truck stop in PA.  It was Cav’s first boon dock in a parking lot and he was a little nervous about spending the night in a parking lot.  But it worked out ok.  We didn’t get rousted out in the middle of the night by a bunch of big drunken truckers, as was his worry.

The second night was another boon dock at a truck top in Spiceland, IN.  We had really heavy rains in the early evening, but things settled down by late evening.  Day three and 1,200 miles later had us across the Mississippi and into Missouri.  The weather was extremely warm with temps in the low 90’s and humidity at about the same place.  I needed A/C to be able to sleep in that weather.  So with my Allstays app on my cell phone, I found a nice state park (Finger Lakes State Park) near Columbia that had electricity and the price was right at only $21 / night.  The A/C in the RV kept us nice and cool.

Cav at Finger Lakes State Park

It’s Missouri in June and, just like I had last year at this time, we had tornado warnings that night.  I don’t know how folks live so casually with this weather because it put me on edge.   But we made it through the night without starring in a remake of the movie Twister.

Day four with bring us into Kansas and we’ll start to see some of the sights we came to see.