Kansas City, MO to Dayton, OH
Another long drive on the interstate, but this one wasn’t too bad. Probably because we drove from one famous BBQ city to another. Again we yelped the best BBQ place in town and found a joint called Pappy’s. It was in an inconspicuous building, and we actually walked right by the door and would’ve missed it if an employee didn’t see us and point us in the right direction. I wanted to try a little bit of anything and saw that they had something called the “Adam Bomb,” named after Adam Richman from the TV show Man vs Food.
I’m a pretty big eater, so I thought that I would be able to finish the entire thing, so I was a little pissed when Sam suggested that we split it. In the end though I was glad we did. That was a monstrous amount of food, and even though we split everything in half we couldn’t finish.
The barbecue at Pappy’s was amazing. None of the meat comes with any sauce, but it doesn’t need any sauce. The meat was incredibly juicy and flavorful, the mix of spices on the dry rub was perfect. They did have sauce that you could add on top, they were all pretty amazing as well. If the Adam Bomb had killed me, I would’ve died satisfied. Oh yeah and FAT. I think I gained 5 lbs in Missouri alone. That’s pretty crazy for less than 24 hours.
After all that gluttony we walked around a bit and explored the gateway arch. I had seen pictures of it, but it’s even more amazing to see in person. We took the elevator up to the top. It feels like a freaking space ship, both the ride up and when you’re at the top. The ride up is in this little spherical elevator that’s like a tiny space capsule. You feel like you’re in a spaceship at the top because the space is pretty small, and because the windows are like little spaceship viewing ports.
Afterwards we had another long drive through the heartland to reach Dayton, Ohio. Sam had an old labmate who works on the airforce base in Dayton, so we crashed at his place for the night. For some reason the midwest is really humid, ridiculously uncomfortably hot and sticky and humid. I don’t understand why. There’s no freaking water out there. Sam’s friend Kunia had lived in Dayton for a year, but had no furniture in his house. Literally no furniture. He had a futon, and that was it. He used boxes for his computer desk. I slept on the carpet in the hot, humid apartment, tossing and turning and sweating like a pig all night.
