In Lyons, I stopped and topped off the fuel cell with 91 octane, and was quite pleased that the 428 didn't complain about the 87 for the first leg of the drive, I'm sure the cool night air probably helped get us through that little experiment as well.
Just as I was exiting the station, Darren drove by in the Dakota, so I jumped out and followed him. With a cold soda in my hand, and the excitement of watching Darren weaving all over the road, I didn't struggle at all to stay awake for the next 20 miles until we drove into the small town of Nickerson Kansas.
He hastily whipped the Dakota into an empty parking lot to the left of the road, and nosed the truck up to the sidewalk, so we could see traffic coming down the road. I parked right beside him, and jumped out to ask him what the problem was.
"The battery is pretty much dead, Boone's going to have to pull over and we'll have to charge it with the generator."
His miscalculation was parking on the left, within a mile or two of a right turn on the route sheet. Boone, Dale, and Rachael all blew right by us, intently looking at the other side of the road.
"Dang it!" he hollered, throwing his hands in the air, then reaching for Dad's cell phone in his pocket.
"Don't worry about it, Darren, we can handle this", I interrupted him.
"How? Boone's got all the stuff in the trailer!"
"We'll just swap batteries, my alternator works, so my car will charge that battery, while you use up my fresh one, that way we can keep going instead of sitting around waiting on a charge."
"Why didn't we think of that before?"
"You didn't ask!"
He muttered something under his breath, and we finished the deal in ten minutes and were on our way.

Boone called a short time later, "We are shot, this is getting ugly, you guys need to look for a motel in the next town".
"You passed us in the last town, so YOU need to find one!"
"OK, I think it's Hutchinson..."

Did you know Hutchinson is the Home of the Kansas State Fair? We didn't either.

Did you know the Motel rooms are about double the rate when the Fair is in town? We didn't either, until we asked for two rooms!