Blowing Through Kansas

One thing I really like about our motorhome, and our HHR, is that when you drive straight, in no wind, the steering wheel sits “right”, not at an angle like you see above.  Today, it drove at an angle for more than half the day.  Not because anything was busted, but because from Wichita to Liberal Kansas, where we are staying tonight, the cross wind was so strong that it took that angle to keep it on the road!  As trucks passed going the other way, I had to be careful that the motorhome didn't go into the oncoming lane because for a brief second, they block the wind.  From Peculiar to Wichita we had a head wind…got 7 mpg. 

Tonight we are staying at a Passport America park in Liberal, Kansas.  It is your typical “older park” with many “older RV’s and mobile homes, along with a few nice ones.  But the price, $16, is right…includes electric, water, sewer, cable TV that works.  Since we are only here for a night, and our tanks were empty, I topped off our fresh water and put the hose away, so all we need to do is put electric and cable wires away, and off we go.  It is 6:30 central time, and a pleasant 75 degrees.  Tonight the low will be in the low 40’s, instead of mid 20’s like last night.  We have 600 miles to go tomorrow, then we will slow down our pace a bit from there to Sacramento.   I think tomorrow we “might” even have some pictures to share…so far we have been so busy fighting mother nature while driving.

Note:  As we packed up to leave this morning, Marcia realized that what we thought was taken out of the garbage can by Bubba the other day, was never in the garbage, but in a little garbage bin she has by her front seat...so now we both think that Skruffy was the culprit for both events, and poor Bubba probably was just an innocent onlooker.  However, we have cut the treats way down the past 48 hours since the little girl has been walking around with a full tummy, which seems to be better now.

Family Time

I was so tired yesterday, I failed to say where we were staying.  In Peculiar Missouri there is one RV Park called Peculiar Park Place.  There are many monthly or long-term stay RVs, but they are all in good condition, many with underpinning to keep them from freezing during the cold winters.  There are 14 sites in the back which do not have water year around, and don’t have sewer.  This is where we were, but that is good because it is further away from the noise of the Interstate.

   

It is a nice park, and if I was to have business in the KC area, I would probably stay here…except my Aunt and cousins are in Blue Springs.  Since my son is in Overland Park, Kansas, this was a good place to stay, and kept us from having to drive through heavy KC traffic when we leave on Monday.

    

Around noon we headed over to my Aunt Vera’s house in Blue Springs.  She married my mother’s brother, Harold, who passed away 14 years ago.  Her son (my cousin) Donald, who is my age, and his wife Sheri were visiting from California (along with one daughter, son-in-law and three grandkids).  Her oldest daughter, Cassie and her husband Rick, were there, but they also live in Blue Springs.  Vera’s oldest child, David, has a daughter who lives in Independence, and this was the first time I had met her, or second if I met her when she was a young child.  David is my oldest brother Jim’s age, and that was the name mom and dad were going to give him until Vera named her first child David, who was born just a few months before Jim.  So “I” got the name David three children later.

We took some indoor Tulips over, and came back home with some freshly baked bread that Cassie had made…she learned from the expert, her father, who was a master bread maker…as is she.  In fact, former KC Chief’s running back Kimble Anders lived just a few houses away from Harold and Vera, and every time he scored in a game, Harold would take freshly baked bread over to them. 

We now have 1,200 miles to go to get to Phoenix by Wednesday.  Not sure how far we will get tomorrow, but hope to make it at least to the Texas/Kansas boarder…perhaps as far as Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Either way, Monday and Tuesday will be long travel days, with a shorter day on Wednesday.  I just hope we don’t have any more  new weather events, because we have faced humid warmth in Florida, rain in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, hail in Arkansas, and sustained wind and cold in Missouri.  Although it did not snow where we are, it did snow in parts of Blue Springs Saturday night.  Outside of “heat”, about the only new weather left are fog, tornadoes and hurricanes…none of which sounds very good to us.