“This seems like a weird neighborhood for the Best Western to be located in”
That’s because we weren’t in the neighborhood where our hotel for the night was meant to be.
We were 170 miles away.
Our last road trip mistake saw us getting lost on a hike, but at least we hadn’t ended up more than 2.5 hours away in the wrong direction. This time we had.
Here’s what happened.
The seeds of the debacle were planted several weeks earlier. We were planning our travel for the rest of the year and still had one night we needed to book. After leaving Litchfield IL, our following stop was due to be Oklahoma City. That’s more than an 8 hour drive which we didn’t feel like doing in one shot, so we figured we’d stop for the night halfway along.
We found a cheap place to stay in Springfield MO on Airbnb and added it to our hotel tracking spreadsheet. By the way, I know that a hotel tracking spreadsheet probably sounds weird, but seeing as we live in hotels and Airbnbs and move every 5 days or so, we need some way of keeping track of everything.
The spreadsheet had worked perfectly for the first 9 months of our 5 year, 50 state road trip, but I subsequently made a mistake.
Just before our stay in Litchfield, I’d gone to see a Live and Counting Crows concert in Champaign IL. Well, I thought I was seeing Live and Counting Crows.
It turns out that although the two bands were touring together this summer, there were a couple of tour dates Live weren’t playing at. Champaign was one of those dates; I was gutted about this as I’d loved Live in my teens and never gotten to see them play live, whereas I had seen Counting Crows live back when we lived in Virginia.
The good news is that Champaign wasn’t their last tour date. In fact, there was another concert in Missouri the very night we’d be in the state the following week on our way to Oklahoma.
There was one downside with this though. We’d be staying in Springfield and they were playing in Kansas City, 170 miles to the north. Luckily, we’d booked a refundable stay on Airbnb so I cancelled that, booked a one night stay at a cheap Best Western just outside of Kansas City and updated our hotel tracking spreadsheet.
Except I didn’t update all of it.
I’m not entirely sure how I managed it, but I updated every single cell in that row on the spreadsheet with the exception of the address.
I think you can probably see where this is going…
Fast forward a week and it’s time to leave Litchfield and head towards Kansas City. Now, Google Sheets has a helpful feature where if you tap on a cell containing an address while using your phone, it’ll display an icon for Google Maps. Tapping that Google Maps icon automatically brings up directions to that address.
The address column on the spreadsheet is narrow, so I didn’t see which city was listed. We therefore set off thinking we were heading to Kansas City, only to find ourselves outside our cancelled Airbnb in Springfield several hours later.
This was frustrating enough, but there was another problem. It was due to take almost three hours to get from Springfield to Kansas City and the concert was due to start in three hours. Live were due on before Counting Crows, so there was a very real chance I’d miss at least some of their show which was the whole purpose of our rearranged plans in the first place.
The traffic up to Kansas City thankfully wasn’t bad and we arrived at our hotel slightly ahead of schedule. After checking in and running our stuff up to the room, I headed to the concert. The parking lots were packed, so I ended up in a distant parking lot a few minutes walk away.
As I got closer to Kansas City Starlight Theatre, I could hear music. I was late 🙁
Except I wasn’t 😀
It was just music they were playing over the loudspeakers beforehand. I made my way inside, took my seat and literally 10 seconds after sitting down, Live came on stage.
I’d made it! I couldn’t believe I’d cut it quite that close, but I’d made it in time to take in every second of their show.
It was certainly worth it. Getting to hear Lightning Crashes, All Over You, Turn My Head, Heaven and more all performed live was my inner-90s teen dream come true.
And it almost didn’t happen. All because of one stupid address on a spreadsheet.
Lesson learned for the future!
Many of your “mistakes” have me laughing, but this one had me laughing out loud for real. I’m so glad you made it to the concert (I saw them on that same tour in St Prte- and it totally brought back all the memories!).