Driving Driving Driving

2019-10-10 (Thursday)

We’be sure been having a lot of weather lately. For several days, we were driving under cloudless blue skies through Nevada and Colorado. Yesterday afternoon we finally noticed clouds had arrived, but it was still a HOT day (in the 80s). Except by the time we parked, it was getting a bit breezy. The temperature didn’t drop too much overnight-it was about 60 when we woke up this morning—but we had wind through our open windows all night, and it seemed to be really whipping up in the morning.

As we dressed and had breakfast, we were pretty worried about driving—the wind was rocking our RV noticeably. We are nothing but a big box on the highway, when all is said and done, and driving in high winds is pretty scary if not downright dangerous. We checked all the weather reports locally and ahead of us on the road, and were somewhat alarmed at mentions of a storm front, and severe rainstorms in central Missouri, our destination for the day.

Finally we decided to go as far as Wichita, only an hour away, and see what the current reports were. We got on the road at 8:45 (early!!!!) and were happy to not feel buffeting as we drove. In fact, the wind seemed to be at our back. By Wichita, there was nothing to note that was alarming, so we kept on driving. We adhered to a strict one-hour schedule, taking turns, because it was a pretty monotonous road, and hard on the eyes.

That was pretty much the sum of our day— taking turns driving. The sky was overcast most of the day, although it seemed we were headed toward slightly lighter clouds. We stopped in Eureka, Kansas, for lunch. We drove down a side street to the local park, where we were the only people to be seen. Cassie appreciated the grass very much. Then we drove on. At about 2:00, we crossed the state line into Kansas (I was driving and Joey didn’t get any photos for me). And still things were going smoothly. We made good time on US-54, still going due east.

As the afternoon wore on, we projected where we might be able to stop, and ended up finding a town near the Lake of the Ozarks, which seems to be an enormous reservoir, judging by all the irregular edges. After two nights at Walmart, we voted for showers, so I used my Good Sam app and found a nice campground in the town of Osage Beach.

Just as we checked in, we heard lots of loud thunder, and by the time we reached our assigned site, it was raining cats and dogs. It has been raining most of the evening since. Not only that, our phone weather alarm apps both went off a few minutes ago, warning of flood alerts in this area. Poor Cassie does NOT like this weather—she has been shoved under the kitchen table for a while to stay safe, although she has now come out as the rain lessened a bit.

The report is that it will rain all night, and early in the morning. There are all kinds of random threats to go with it, such as nickel-sized hail and even tornadoes. Usually nothing like that really happens, though, so I’m not too worried, but I hope it stops before it’s time for us to really start driving. We are heading toward St. Louis, and then into Illinois, and will be forced to take the interstate sometime during the day. We are so glad to have stayed off it until now; it’s difficult driving with all the trucks blowing us around. We’re happier taking our risks with Mother Nature. Our worries about the high winds this morning turned out to be nothing, and I’m sure I’ll sleep just fine tonight.