No AAA discount

On the road outside Kansas City, as a red sun sunk over the rolling hills and closed out a 98-degree day, Michele called ahead to reserve a room. We wanted to stay near "The Round Mound," a fossil site in southeastern Kansas, so we could get up early Tuesday morning and go hunting for brachiopods and trilobites before the heat turns brutal.

So now we're in tiny Yates Center, Kansas, staying retro-style: in the Star Motel, a no-frills, 1960s, U-shaped motel built of river stone. As the glowing red and white rooftop sign says, it's "American owned." Our car is parked outside our door, and the laboring air conditioner still hasn't cooled the room. Oh, and the window doesn't open. We tried leaving the door open for a while, the rumbling of trucks competing with the TV. The boys are sleeping on the floor, where most of the cool air winds up. Nobody is under the sheets. It's like a transition to camping, but, as I told the boys, it's an old-fashioned, pre-chain motel, a bit of Americana. When I went into the office to register, a chocolate lab stuck his head out of a curtained room and barked. The manager -- everyone in town calls her Mama Karen, she said -- had me fill out my information on a hand-written index card and suggested the Tip Top, a diner down the street, for breakfast. A woman's voice from behind the curtain seconded the tip, saying she preferred another local cafe for lunch because of the salad bar.

The bathroom's sliding door doesn't slide all the way, and it's a bit steamy even at 11, three hours after Mama Karen turned on the AC. But we're so tired from driving almost 700 miles, including the brain-numbing, practically attraction-free Route 36 in Missouri, that the temperature hardly matters.