We’re almost home. Of course, almost is a subjective term, but when you start a trip home with 1,715 miles to go, 518 doesn’t seem like that far. We just drove past the St. Louis arch (much more impressive than the Golden Arches of McDonalds we've been seeing for the whole trip) and are enjoying a gorgeous sunset.
We’re running a little farther behind than normal for this day of the trip, but we stopped for a few hours of painball (aka paintball) in Joplin, MO. The place there was really cool to us and opened early just for our group to come through. They had some really good castles, forts and bunkers to use and almost all of us played. Those who didn’t cheered everyone on and then went inside to nap on the picnic tables when they discovered that it wasn’t going to be a short war. It takes a few hours to go through 17,000 paintballs and we have some impressive welts to show for our efforts! I hadn’t ever been paintballing before and I can honestly say that it is a lot of fun. Not necessarily something I’m going to want to do every weekend or anything like that, but it would be something to do again. The van ride to lunch was filled with glory stories from our paintball war and we probably looked even more homeless then we did after working all week.
We got to Chick-Fil-A for lunch which was packed with local families, but they still managed to get most of us through the line and out the door in 30 mins. A few students crossed the street to go to Arbys, and as they crossed, we’re guessing they distracted a driver who rear-ended the person in front of them. That’s how you know we look rough – the gawkers cause accidents! After we finally rounded everyone back up into the vans, we headed east towards home. We made great time the last stretch – no bathroom breaks for about 4.5 hours because 33 of the 39 people on the trip fell asleep within the first 20 minutes into the drive. Some brave co-pilots stayed awake to help the drivers navigate through Misery (sorry, Missouri) where at least the landscape changes every few miles!
We’re headed for Steak’n’Shake for dinner (it’s about 3 hours away from here) and then back on the road to just keep driving. The GPS is saying drive time is around 8.5 hours, so when we figure in dinner and at least one more bathroom stop, plus dropping of Tech and State, I’m guessing we’ll get back to Big Rapids around 5a. Later than last year, but with 24 hours of Spring Break left for all of us to sleep before Monday morning rolls around.
I have a lot more photos to share with you, but the tablet and camera card are declaring mutiny. Similar to the students who managed to highjack the radio and play auto-toned Muppet remixes of One Direction songs, followed by country songs that "Kate, you'll like this!" during my last driving shift. My brother knows I don't like country, but he took advantage of his co-pilot position to highjack the auxiliary cable.
We'll get photos up soon of the trip, and I'll share the Facebook link on here as well to see all of the photos we'll post there as well. In case you missed it, Ferris Team 1 was interviewed by a news crew while they were building! We found the news broadcast in case you'd like to see it: http://www.kvue.com/story/news/state/2015/03/11/students-spending-spring-break-volunteering-in-mexico/70191630/
Thank you for your prayers for us as we travel! We appreciate you greatly!
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