A Day as a Non-Tourist

We've been on the road for about 2 weeks now. We've eaten in a lot of restaurants (and grocery stores) and stayed in numerous hotels. If you've stayed in a hotel in the last few years, you've probably noticed the little signs in the bathroom that say we can help the environment by not having them wash our towels every day. That makes environmental sense and business sense. I don't get new towels out at home every day! You let them know you'll re-use your towels by hanging them up. If you want them replaced anyway, just leave them on the floor. In practice, though, we've hardly ever found a hotel that follows this practice. On this trip, every hotel has changed the towels every day, no matter that we hung them up as a sign that we wanted to keep using them. Heck, there have been a couple of times when they didn't clean the room -- didn't make the bed or take out the trash or even clean the toilet -- but they changed out the towels. It's hard to be a good environmental citizen when the hotels won't cooperate!

And while I have your attention, let's talk about restaurants. We've gotten used to sharing nearly every meal because portions are so unreasonably large. And I've written before about how much we like to go to salad bars at big grocery stores. Of course, some restaurant food is better than others. But what we're finding is that so much of the restaurant food is terribly salty! It seems they've lost the ability to cook well with herbs and spices, and just add a ton of salt, instead. That's another reason to eat smaller portions, or to get food at the grocery store, even if it's prepared food. So it's taking a real effort to cut back on fat, salt, and big plates of food. But it pays off... on the budget, as well!

We're here on the border between Liberty and Kansas City, Missouri. We happen to be surrounded by shopping centers and restaurant choices! So we've enjoyed a great steak dinner (which we shared) at Longhorn, and Red Robin (saving lunch leftovers for dinner) for gourmet burgers. In fact, today, we decided to take off from tourist stuff or driving, and did some shopping, car washing, laundry, and hanging out. Notice the photos from driving to Haun's Mill and after the car wash. Tonight we're going to plug the laptop into the high-def TV and watch a movie from Redbox at the grocery store.

Ahhh, America. It's all about the options.