St. Louis

If you look closely you can see Rob at the very bottom of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

Rob had to pass through security screening to enter the Jefferson Expansion Museum located below the Gateway Arch!

After visiting the Arch we headed over to Pappy's Smokehouse, one of the best BBQ places St. Louis has to offer.

Inside Pappy's. Highly recommended!

Rob gets a new state -- KANSAS!

Rob officially crosses into his 44th visited state -- Kansas! Only 6 states left to visit!

For Rob's first night in Kansas, he wanted to stay in Colby.

Usually while on the road, we try to avoid chain or fast food restaurants in favor of local one-of-a-kind places. In order to find good local dinner places we usually refer to yelp.com, roadfood.com, or urbanspoon.com. One place from Colby caught our eye on yelp.com -- it seemed like a true local hangout (maybe even bordering on being too local), it served beer, and it even said there were great pictures of tornadoes decorating the walls (and it's been a longtime wish of mine to witness a tornado from a safe distance). So we hopped in the car and drove to Twisters! Great food, interesting locals, cold beer, tornado pics, and even a side dish called German french fries. Thanks, Twisters!

When we realized how close we were to Nebraska, we planned a route that would take us through Nebraska and have us enter back into Kansas right by the next stop on our trip. Welcome to Nebraska!

Soon after entering back into Kansas, we arrived at the geographical center of the USA. And guess what? The center of the United States is... in the center of nowhere!

So this is it -- the official geographical center of the USA!

There is a small chapel at the center of the USA. It has seating for 8.

Cawker City, Kansas is down the road a bit from the center of the USA. Time to see the world's largest ball of twine!

"Downtown" Cawker City. This is IT. After this patch of buildings the landscape goes right back to cornfields.

Rob. Me. Twine. At last.

So sad we could not be there for the Twine-a-thon! That would have been an experience!

Residents of Cawker City are very trusting -- they let visitors go right up and touch the ball of twine.

After the Center and the Twine, we continued our drive east and made it almost to the Kansas - Missouri border. We stayed in Lawrence, Kansas and I found perhaps the one and only town in Kansas where I think I could live happily. Lawrence is a great town with a downtown area large enough to keep you from getting bored yet not so big and busy as to be intimidating. There are no pictures from Lawrence, but we owe another round of thanks to yelp.com for helping us find a wonderful place for dinner -- the Free State Brewing Company. Thanks, Free State!

Four Corners

After leaving Blanding, Utah we headed down to the Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico all meet. We officially crossed into Colorado on our way there.

Four Corners!

Rob Lowe is officially in all four states at the same time.

My feet are planted firmly in Utah and New Mexico while my arms extend into Arizona and Colorado (with Rob).

Though my car wasn't too thrilled with this, after Four Corners we headed back east through Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. A Ford Focus with two passengers (three, if you count Rob) and several weeks worth of luggage can make it over the Rockies, but sometimes it's a hard task. There were times we couldn't drive any higher than 25 mph even with the car in 2nd or 3rd gear.

While driving up to the top of Monarch Pass, we actually had to concentrate on breathing. I never realized how many days I spent without once stopping to realize how easy the simple act of breathing was. Walking around and taking pictures was a slow process, with frequent breaks from walking to concentrate on breathing enough! I couldn't get over the fact that we saw people riding their bikes up the mountains while we could barely make it up in a car.

Most of the time as we were winding up and down each mountain, there was no guardrail to keep the cars from driving right off of the steep cliffs. It was a beautiful drive but definitely not one I'd like to do at night or in the snow!

Balanced Rock in Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.