Travelogue: St. Louis to Indiana

Time Period: June 12 – June 29
Miles Driven: 799

June Travels After a couple of weeks of our adventures being driven on visiting family in Texas and St. Louis, our attentions turned to social time with new and old friends. We had found some regional Burning Man events to attend, and even rendezvoused with another friend and took him road tripping with us.

Gateway Burn – Potosi, MO

We took a jaunt down to Potosi, MO to attend the St. Louis regional Burning Man style event called Gateway Burn. We figured it would be an excellent way to meet some awesome people in the St. Louis area, so that next time we’re visiting the area we have people other than family to visit.

It had been raining lots, and the land the event was held on was very primitive. A lot of vehicles where having difficulty getting in. When we arrived, they stationed a huge 4×4 truck with a tow rope at the top of the hill, in case we got stuck. But Chris mastered pulling our Oliver up a muddy slippery hill with ease with our 4×4 Jeep – and everyone watching was suitably impressed. We spent most of the event giving tours of our Oliver – which was a great way to meet folks.

And did we ever meet some great folks! We’re looking forward to future visits to St. Louis to not only spend quality time with family, but further develop a community there.

Midwest Couchsurfing Roadtrip

Our good friend Matt Bell was just finishing up his 4.5 month sabbatical world trip, and decided to join us in the midwest before heading home to San Francisco. We promised him a midwest roadtrip so that he could also get a taste of what full time technomadic life is like for us. It was also our first time taking on a passenger in our travels. We picked Matt up at a local hostel upon our return from Gateway Burn, and then swept him away to Chris’ father’s Flag Day celebration at the local Elks. A fitting reintroduction to America, we think.

We also took Matt to explore to totally uber awesome City Museum in St. Louis. And then we packed up the Oliver and converted the space around for sleeping a third.

Is it still Couchsurfing if the couch is moving?

Matt booked his flight out of Chicago, so we took a 3 day meandering tour up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers – exploring riverside towns along the way.

Northern Indiana & Chicago

We dropped Matt off for his flight in Chicago, and then headed to our friends place in northern Indiana. She had ample trailer parking for us. I knew Kele back when I lived in Florida, and it’s been a true pleasure to be able to stay close to her by rendezvousing in our travels.

We took a day and trained into Chicago to meet up with some other friends from Florida, Sterling and Melissa. Melissa is now living in the Chicago area, and Sterling just happened to be up visiting. We also rendezvoused with them last year while they were vacationing in Las Vegas. While in Chicago, Chris also upgraded his iPhone to the new 3G S.

Lakes of Fire – Lacota, Michigan

One of our purposes for our visit to this region was to attend the Lakes of Fire regional Burning Man event in western Michigan – and introduce Kele to the community. It would be her first Burning Man experience.

We had also met quite a number of folks at Gateway Burn who were heading up to Lakes of Fire, so we formed an impromptu theme camp with them. It was awesome to spend more time getting to know these folks! Lakes of Fire was a much larger event – about 500 people, and extremely well run. We had a blast, and Kele really seemed to click with it all.