When we awoke in Osceola, IA the next morning, it was a bit warmer than at home: all the way up to 24F. We were glad we'd spent the money to plug into campground electricity. The things that had stopped working still weren't working. Our electric fireplace and portable electric heater, along with our propane-fired oven and range, were our heat sources.
I took the time to make sandwiches and prepare better road snacks than we'd had before on the previous day. Here's a shot of our refrigerator. See what I mean about it being jammed? (The contents were slightly different on that morning, but the principle is the same.) The outside stuff in the cooler was still frozen solid, so I didn't need to make soom room.
The bottom three drawers may be better organized than I usually manage. The left-hand drawer contains a good selection of deli meats and cheeses for sandwiches. The right-hand drawer has lettuce and had spinach, though I've used that up now. The middle drawer has snack vegetables. Here's the sandwich-stuff drawer:
and the contents, spread out:
Sorry for the blurry photo! There's roast beef, salami, herbed chicken, pepperoni; sliced cheddar, pepperjack, Kerry Gold cheeses. Dill pickle chips in that little potato salad container. My sandwiches always include pickles; his don't. He likes Miracle Whip. I like mayonnaise. We both like mustard.
On that first day, I still had my beloved sourdough bread. I could have sworn I'd packed an extra loaf of that, but I haven't found it. (So far that seems to be the only thing forgotten; that's better than my usual record despite our greater-than-usual packing chaos.)
Here's a later set of sandwiches -- his and hers -- and mighty fine sandwiches they've been!
That Kerrygold Dubliner cheese is nice stuff. I've never had it before, but I'll put it on my shopping radar from now on,.
We also had asparagus, tomatoes, celery, carrots for snacking.
The cherry tomatoes had come in a plastic shell with a label sealing it. Inside the label they have a pretty nice marketing deal, I think. It might make a few people think harder about how and from where we get our food.
We drove south. I think the only road sight I have from that day is the beautiful bridge across the Missouri River, joining Kansas City, Missouri to Kansas City, Kansas.
And we drove south. And we drove. It became a marathon session. The plan had been to go to northern Oklahoma and its Welcome Center. But it was supposed to be well below freezing there too! "Let's continue on," we said. "We'll get through Oklahoma City and then look for a place to stop for the night," we said. "There'll be a rest area farther south," we said. We finally found it, well after dark, in Gainesville, Texas. Total mileage for the day: 624 miles, and 12 hours. We split a bowl of split pea soup, crawled into bed under lots of covers, and crashed for the night.
