Week 4: Kansas City to Indianapolis! 
After a busy weekend packed with tailgating, we took the night off and took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese (to pay off Frankie for all his hard work!) He practiced his new math skills, adding up all his tickets, then got Dad to help him figure out what he could spend them on.
The next day, we were on a mission to find some genuine KC barbeque. So we found a Gate's on the way out of town, and ordered their "small" family party, which came with with ribs, ham, beef, pickles, bbq beans, white bread and pickles. Of course, we ordered some local beer to wash it all down.  We all ate until we were stuffed, and still took enough road-worthy munchies with us to get us all the way to Indianapolis!
But we only made it as far as St. Charles that night, and we knew just where to stay. Pulling into town that night, we stopped at one of our favorite campgrounds, Sundermeier RV Park. We'd called ahead, and Carolyn had our paperwork and our site waiting for us. In 5 minutes, we were hooked up and headed over to Beefeaters, their on-site Award-Winning Bar and Grill! When we walked in the door, we were greeted like old friends by Bill, Carolyn, their staff and regulars. In fact, they insisted that we stay an extra day to take in some of the local atmosphere in St. Charles.
The next morning, we went for a walk down the historic Katy trail on the banks of the Missouri River. Along the way, Jay spotted a snake, and caught it for the boys to play with. Nick and Luc grew up in Washington, catching snakes and frogs in the creek by our house. But Frankie doesn't meet too many wild reptiles in our neighborhood in Orange County. And as hard as his brothers tried to show him the snake was friendly, he didn't want anything to do with it. So we let it go and continued down the trail toward town.
We'd worked up an appetite on our walk, so we found a restaurant with a great patio to relax and have some lunch. They served amazing burgers under a lush canopy of old trees. The little old main street was bustling with tourists exploring antiques and gift shops. But we were looking for something specific. Bill had told us about a shop called Figuero's that carried hundreds of different hot sauces. It's more like thousands.
We spent easily an hour in this room, marveling at the vast variety (and the creativity) exhibited on the shelves. Of course, we had to buy a few to try for ourselves. Jay bought a bottle of PETA Sauce, which stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. Nick had to try a bottle of Endorphin Rush, which is so hot he had to have parental consent to buy it! And I finally found a bottle of Toad Sweat, a dessert hot sauce which I've been dying to try ever since I heard about it last year. You use it as a topping on your ice cream, like hot fudge. And it is TASTY!
From there we walked through the rest of the historic downtown, which was once the first capital of Missouri. We stopped for ice cream and ate it on the grass in the local park, before flagging down one of the free trollies to take us back to the campground.
After a fun day in town, we settled into our campsite to roast some hotdogs and marshmellows and visit with our neighbors at Sundermeier.
As we walked through the campground, we noticed a big group of people in the next row down were cooking on a bunch of Camp Chef equipment, so we went over to check it out.
Turned out, they were a group of insurance adjusters who'd been living at the park since some big storms last winter that caused a lot of damage in the area.  Some of them were from Louisiana, and some were from Tennessee, and when we asked them what they were cooking up for dinner they responded, "Squirrel." So of course, Jay had to stick around for a bite!
They ended up taking Jay and Nick out later for Go Kart racing, and they even gave Nick their LSU flag as a souvenier!
We left the next day for Indianapolis, promising Bill and Carolyn that we will be back again!
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