At this stage, I am on a bus heading towards St Louis, MO. It’s still the first day.

The day before I set off, I watched the weather channel because I had heard about the tornado ravaging the poor town of Joplin, MO. The weather presenters kept saying that tornado predictions are never an exact science but I was worried that I was going to turn up and be told that the buses had been cancelled because of the risk. British readers, I’m sure you’ll understand why I was panicking. American readers, the UK travel network is extensive but plunges into chaos at the first sight of a snowflake or a bit of heavy rain. Hence my worry about tornadoes!

We arrived in St Louis at about 1am. I remember thinking the city looked quite nice at the time. The next stop for me was Kansas City, MO. I went to find the line, it was long and I was at the back of it. They took ages to load us onto the bus and they filled it before they got us all on. Luckily, the St Louis Greyhound terminal is a depot and so they found another bus for us not long after. Another word of warning; if you’re at the back of a very long line and you aren’t able to get on the bus and you are not in a depot, get comfortable because you’re probably waiting for the next bus. The further west you are, the longer the wait. However, this time, being at the back of the line worked in my favour because the spare bus was empty. I had a seat to myself for about 4 or 5 hours while crossing Missouri and so I put my feet up and managed to catch a bit of sleep.

And so onto Day 2, we arrived in Kansas City at about 7am, next stop was Denver, CO. The terminal was total chaos and no one was sure which line they had to be in and the announcement system was impossible to understand. The wait seemed long and I remember needing the toilet but being worried about leaving the line in case I missed the bus. They were showing news reports all about the hurricanes in Joplin, MO and the news readers were announcing warnings in parts of Kansas…the exact state I was about to cross for 10 hours. I can’t deny that I was very worried. I could over hear endless conversations about the desolation in Joplin and people were discussing the likelihood of a Greyhound bus being hit. Forget worried, I was genuinely fearing for my life!

This is pretty much exactly what those 10hours crossing Kansas looked like.

Somehow I got on the bus from Kansas City to Denver and it was indescribably tedious. My ipod battery died so I had nothing to keep me even vaguely distracted and I was worn out by my first night on a bus. The plains of Kansas stretched on in all directions and there was almost nothing to look at except some silos and oil wells. I maintain that you have no idea what “nothing” looks like until you’ve been to Kansas. The one thing that did brighten up the view was the anti-abortion signs scattered along the side of the road. Some of my favourites: Abortion kills what God created, Chose life, your parents did, If you die today, where will you spend eternity? I’m not sure the last one refers exclusively to abortion but I enjoyed the fact of a road sign referring to my death.

Still Kansas...I was checking the horizon for a tornado every few minutes!

I was sat next to a guy who started to bombard me with questions at one point. Normally, I have been very happy to speak to people on the buses but, I had just had my first night’s “sleep” on a Greyhound and so I wasn’t in a particularly social mood!  This guy insisted on keeping up the “small talk” and I was being a curt as possible and I was trying to make my body language speak volumes by sitting scrunched up against the window and staring out. He was just yakking on and on and, even though I asked him nothing, he told me endless things I didn’t want to hear. I pretended to be asleep, I pretended to listen to music but none of it deterred him. I could hear the people behind me discussing religion, ethics and the meaning behind the scriptures. They basically swapped their life stories in Kansas and I go to hear their religious talk.

Next – Colorado to Utah and all the fun in between.