Crossing the US: St. Louis, Hays - KS, and Literally Working from the Road

In this post, I chat through our journey between Tennessee and Colorado, stopping in St. Louis and Hays, Kansas. I touch on working from our beautiful hotel in St. Louis, reflect on conference goers and even show how I work while Kailahs driving.

Glo exploring the lobby at the Chase Park Plaza

The week’s journey: This was a crazy week. We left Gatlinburg, Tennessee on Sunday and arrived in Estes Park, Colorado on Wednesday night. It was an aggressive three days of travel, but we had an awesome stay in St. Louis at the historic Chase Park Plaza hotel. It was the perfect stopover, to see the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch (our second national park of the trip!) and grab a little Missouri BBQ. We were fortunate to get set up with a King suite at the Park Plaza, which had a living room (for the girls) and then a king bedroom for us. This made our stay VERY comfortable and much less stressful. We were also perfectly located next to a park and several restaurants (including a BBQ spot that we thoroughly enjoyed, called Salt and Smoke). Highly recommend!

We visited the Arch on our second day - mostly to cross it off our list - but were pleasantly surprised. Coming from New England (where Spring had yet to “spring”) the sprawling green grass and pink blossomed trees provided a perfect afternoon of lounging around and letting the girls roam. We also learned that you can take a tram up the Arch - we had no idea! Unfortunately the tickets sell out in advance, so we couldn’t go. I think that worked out for the better though because I saw the tram car model in the lobby and I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to cram my 6’ 5” frame into that thing.

The ladies yelling at me in front of the Arch

Following our stay in St. Louis, we headed further west, stopping in Hays, Kansas. We chose Hays, simply as a burn and turn location to break up a very long drive. We stayed at a relatively new Hilton Garden Inn. After going in with low expectations of this leg of our stay, I’ll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. If for some reason you find yourself needing to cross Kansas, Hays is an easy and comfortable stop.

(If you want to see our exact route, with some extra content, head over to our route map!)

On to business: Since the majority of this 3 day journey was during the “business week”, I obviously had obligations to deliver on as we drove across.

“WWD” (please ignore that finger print ridden screen)

This might surprise some people, but sometimes I work while we are driving down the road. And I don’t mean work “offline” - I mean literally logged into the network on my laptop and/or on the phone, knocking out deliverables - going 70 MPH down the highway. I keep my connection through using my phone as a hotspot (or leverage a secondary hotspot if needed). I think most people would be surprised of the internet speeds I’m able to pull from the road - in many cases, faster than my house (Yes, Comcast, that is a shot over your bow).

Working from the lobby at the Chase Park Plaza

In comparison to “working while driving” (lets call it “WWD” from now on), logging hours at our hotel in St. Louis was much more convenient. Not only did we have the suite (with a desk), the hotel also has an entire conference center, with WIFI for guests. And if that wasn’t enough, St. Louis is a 5G Ultra Wideband city. I was pulling download speeds of 800+ MBPS through my phone, which in less-nerdy terms, is REALLY freaking fast for cellular internet.

A bit of reflection: One unexpected realization that I had while working remotely in St. Louis was related to the conferences going on in our hotel. Having recently left a “full time role” in corporate, I thought seeing all of these people dressed up, networking, eating, drinking etc., might make me miss the old grind a bit. But honestly, it had the opposite effect…

The girls were all waiting for me as I was making one last trip to our room, to get the remainder of our belongings (before hitting the road for Hays). I specifically remember riding the elevator down with a group of conference goers and for some odd reason, we were stopping at every floor. The doors would open and then shut. 9th floor, 8th floor, 7th floor…and so on. None of the floor buttons were lit up, and we just kept stopping. All of us just stood there on autopilot waiting for the damn thing to reach the lobby. Eventually I made a “this must be a really courteous elevator” joke (terrible I know) and reached across for the lobby button. As we zoomed down, I couldn’t help but think about how intentional every single minute of my days are. Am I a little overwhelmed? Sure. Feel stretched a bit thin at times? Yes. But I have a reason to get to the bottom of the elevator shaft…

***For the record, I don’t think all conference-goers are on autopilot and definitely don’t think conferences aren’t valuable. This was just an example that hit me “mid-stride” in our journey and really solidified some of my recent lifestyle design decisions.

Anyway, man…what a week. Travel, work, entrepreneurship, parenting, being a good partner…it’s been a challenging balance.

More to come next week as I talk through setting up an “air bnb office”.

Kyle

Greece by Ferry: How do we book?

One of the Blue Star “Slow Ferries” in port

Traveling by ferry seems like a right of passage for visiting the Greek islands. Who hasn’t seen those beautiful landscapes dotted with white washed buildings and blue capped churches? Well, that view can only be seen from one vantage point…the water!

Similar to our 2017 trip, we chose ferries as our primary form of transportation from Athens to the Greek isles and then inter-island during our recent adventure. We slept on a different island three nights in a row and used ferries the entire time. As I was sitting on the boat from Mykonos to Paros, I couldn’t help but think “man, this process is really stress free”. Maybe it was my third Mythos (Greek lager) of the day talking, but I’m pretty sure it was the process I followed to plan and book our ferry logistics.

So what worked for us?

Stop along the way through the Greek Islands

1. Leverage third party sites: I start with a third party ferry search flight like “Lets Ferry”. It allows you to search dates for the timeframe you are traveling and then gives the travel times across multiple ferry companies (Yes, like air travel, there are multiple companies that compete in the Aegean Sea!). Once you find the date and time that works best, take note of the company and move to step two.

2. Navigate directly to ferry company site: This one is self explanatory, but once you find your ferry in step one, you want to go directly to the website of that company. This saves you the admin fee of the third party site (and who doesn’t like savings?!).

3. Select your seat: This one can be a bit situational.

   1. Fast Ferries: On the “fast ferries” (generally any boat except Blue Star), there are two classes; economy and business. Honestly, business class isn’t all that special, but it generally comes with smaller crowds and a dedicated bar. If the extra cost is worth it to you, then by all means, splurge (we did during COVID and loved having almost NOBODY in our compartment and enjoyed a few Mythos).

   2. Slow Ferries: The “slow ferries” are a different animal. In my mind, there are really four options; private room/compartment, business class, airline seats and economy class. Let me break them down in order of general cost (most expensive to least):

      1. Private room/compartment: We actually did this on our first trip to the Greek islands because Kailah was pregnant. It allowed her a traditional private “cruise room” with beds to lie down in throughout the duration of our journey (Athens to Santorini is 7 hours on the slow ferry!). Since we had so many travelers, it wasn’t that expensive and we still had access to the business class restaurant/bar service.

      2. Business class: We went this route on our recent trip as it cut down on the crowds (for COVID) and it gave a relaxing full service restaurant/bar for the duration of the journey. The seating isn’t as comfortable however, as it is mostly chairs around a table. However, if the cost is worth it to you, we recommend this option.

      3. Airline seats: These seats are better than airplane seats as they provide a more reclined seating option for the longer duration ferries. If you are going to sleep on the trip and don’t want a compartment, this probably your best bet. They share the restaurants and bar with the economy seats.

      4. Economy: These are the “plain jane” table seats with a shared restaurant and bar. Cheapest, but the ship is so large you’ll have plenty of space to get up and walk around.

4. Buy through the ferry company site: Once you choose your seat, continue and purchase your tickets directly through the ferry company site. One important note that we found useful was that most ferry companies have a pretty flexible cancellation policy, in case something happens (or you need to cancel due to a global pandemic).

Our business class seats aboard superjets

That’s it! I hope this simplifies the Greek ferry process and inspires you to book with confidence. Oh, and in case you are struggling to find out the name of the Athens port, its called “Piraeus”. Yep, this one took me forever to find too!

Keep maximizing those experiences!

Kyle