Hi Cousins!

There's something I haven't said that needs to be said about all of this. This trip. This blog. Our adventures.

What we've been able to do for the last five weeks... not everybody gets to do this.

A lot of people don't get to pack their stupidly long camper and traipse across the country sightseeing and writing about it.

I wouldn't say we're lucky.

Luck had nothing to do with it, and I don't buy into luck anyway.

We work.

And work responsibilities have created a lot of friction. More than we expected on this trip.

And this trip has not been cheap.

Sure, we planned ahead of time. And we're fine.

Even with—can we just stop for a second and acknowledge—almost seven dollars per gallon for diesel?!?!

Regardless.

We're not LUCKY to be doing this.

As my new Uncle Ricky said, we're BLESSED.

I'll go with that.

The Day

We had an awful drive to St. Louis.

Long. Traffic. The fly stuck in the truck.

All Princess Problems, but problems nonetheless.

It was hot. The place we planned to have dinner was closed. The Steelers lost.

It just wasn't a great day.

And I think we both could've sat in the camper and sulked.

But Jason said, "Let's go out."

He found a place a mile from our campground. It was open. It had food. It had beer.

We put on our best faces and went.

When you're in a strange place and walk into a local bar, you never know what to expect.

I saw football on three screens and two open bar seats and thought, yep.

And it just got better from there.

The Night

There's nothing funnier than a family football rivalry.

A sister rooting for one team. A brother rooting for another. And absolutely no shortage of opinions.

She would launch an attack on his of his team—this player, that coach, whatever terrible decision they made that week—and then he'd fire something right back.

All of it was hilarious.

And you could tell this wasn't new.

This was years of football trash talk.

And that's what we walked into at Unch's Bar and Grill in East St. Louis.

Technically, we were across the river in Illinois.

But who's measuring?

It was the kind of place that gets a little loud sometimes, where everyone knows everyone else, and there's a lot of crosstalk happening.

But I knew when we walked in that the bartender was in charge.

And she wasn't takin' any bullshit.

Perfect.

I love a Girl Boss.

Before the night was over, I think we met almost everyone.

We got adopted into the family.

I now have cousins in St. Louis.

And an uncle.

I learned a new fist bump.

And I laughed so hard.

I used to live in Missouri when I was little, and I remember two kinds of people: backstabber drama people and beautifully welcoming people.

We met the second kind.

We met people who made outsiders feel like family and turned a meh day into a memory.

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Hi cousins!

Hi Uncle Ricky!