Below is the journal for our self-guided trip to Missouri and Arkansas, taken June 21 to July 5, 2008. We started the trip visiting friends in Kansas City and finished the trip visiting Ken's relatives in Ft. Smith, Arkansas and Granby, Missouri. Total distance driven was around 2280 miles.

We stayed in hotels at the beginning and end of the trip, and camped two different places in Arkansas in the middle. Contrary to popular opinion, there is a lot to do in these two states, and we could easily have spent more time there.

We got really lucky with weather. It was hot (mid 90s) some days, but we only got rain once, and other days it stayed in the high 70s to high 80s. For Arkansas and Missouri in the summer, that counts as pretty good weather.

The journal is broken up into three sections. In each section, there is an entry for each day. The journal entries all include links to related pictures taken with Ken's Canon Powershot A70 digital camera.

• Part 1: June 21 to June 25 (Kansas City and Springfield)
• Part 2: June 26 to July 2 (Camping in Arkansas)
• Part 3: July 3 to July 5 (Family Visits)
• Epilogue: The Flower Watering Debacle

We've tried to make the journal entries as compact as possible while still telling you some of the interesting things that happened each day. Hopefully, we've struck the right balance. If you'd rather slog through the entire set of pictures we took while on our trip (there are around 170 of them), you can check out the Gallery page. There are lots of pictures in the gallery that didn't make it into the journal.