Written by Tim Musick, June 27, 2022 for The World On Wheels
If you haven’t read Tim’s reports on preparing for this trip (this is his first time planning a trip), be sure to check out what it took to plan and prepare for this trip in a wheelchair.
Finally, we’re driving to the final destination of this tour. It seems like we’ve been on the road for a month, but it’s just been a week since we landed in Cincinnati.
It’s not nearly as long a drive as we took from Cincinnati to St. Louis. 247 miles as opposed to 384, so this day will be much shorter with only a planned bathroom, gas, and lunch break half way in Columbia, home of Ole Mizzou.
On the way in, we pass Kauffman Stadium, our goal for this leg of the trip, and then into downtown to find our hotel. It’s not hard to find as we climb up the hill by the Liberty Monument with it’s not-so-eternal Eternal Flame. Our home here will be the Residence Inn by Marriott on Union Hill.
We check in and find the hotel’s only wheelchair accessible room, a downstairs unit in a cave-like outdoor hallway. The room is spacious and roomy, with a king-size bed against the wall, a roll-in shower in the bathroom, a full kitchen next to a work desk, and a living room with a sofabed. The sofa is too close to the TV to unfold it for a bed so I scoot it back a bit, revealing many tears in the rug repaired with duct tape.
I look for and find the thermostat for the air conditioning, try to set it, and find out that it does not work. That will not be a problem on this chilly day but if the weather takes a turn to hot and muggy…as it did in St. Louis…it will be. We leave the room to walk to dinner and let the front desk know that the A/C needs fixing, which they promise to do.
