We're Back in Kansas, Toto

2019-10-09 (Wednesday)

As exquisite a day for scenery as yesterday was, that's how bland today was. It's a bit of a difficult transition to drive from Colorado to Kansas, and that's just the truth.

We had a good night at the Walmart lot in La Junta, Colorado, and woke up expecting to get a pretty early start. We WOULD have gotten out before 9:30 (that's early for us!), but I noticed after I walked the dog that I couldn't find my phone. Joe was helping a neighbor--an older woman on her own in a large RV who couldn't get her generator to start, and I was cleaning up our RV, and then I realized I didn't see my phone.

I had actually thought I'd taken it out with me when I took Cassie out, maybe 30 minutes earlier, and I realized before the walk was finished that I didn't have it. I assumed I hadn't really taken it-- I mean, it would have been in my shirt pocket, which is hard to lose something. But I got Joe to come help me, and we spent an hour searching for the phone both in the RV and combing the area where I'd walked. The Life 360 app on the phone said it was still where we were, but we were stymied. After an hour, I went into the Walmart to ask if by chance, someone had found a phone. It seemed like a long shot, but.... YES! They had my phone! So I guess miracles CAN happen.

After that, we got going pretty quickly, but it was already something like 11:00ish. The roads in the eastern park of Colorado are not very fascinating, although the southeast corner where we were today sure beat the I-70 corridor we took last year, which we thought was pretty much unsurpassed for drabness. At least we passed through some small towns.

Just at the state border, there was a rest area, and we stopped there for lunch. We were also happy that they had a dump, because we'd felt perhaps we needed that particular facility. So it was a reasonable stop, except I was somewhat in despair that we were still not even out of Colorado, and it was about 2pm when we left the rest area.

Luckily, the rest of today's drive was less dilatory. The only issue was the significant wind we encountered in Kansas a bit before Dodge City, through tonight when we stopped at Pratt, Kansas's Walmart. (Joe says one thing he likes about this campground is "No quiet hours," ha ha!!) Anyway, I drove the last 80 miles, I think, and the wind was something not fun to deal with. The road was a 65mph road, but that was too fast to drive; I stuck to about 60 instead.

We got to Walmart just at sundown, having made 299 miles (our goal for the day is 250-300 miles.) We had dinner, and I thought we had a long evening ahead, but we just figured out, we are now in the Central Time Zone. So we are only one hour behind home now! Oh, we did have to leave US-50, our road since Reno; US-50 wants to join up with an interstate highway soon, and we'd like to avoid that as long as possible. So we plan one more day on the "blue highways."

No photos today--I was driving a lot, and there was really nothing exciting to photograph. We did note the fields of sorghum, which were impressive, but otherwise nothing really exciting. We were beside the Arkansas River all day, but it seems to peter out in Kansas, and the bed was pretty dry a lot of the time. So... no scenery. It's just Kansas. As we passed through a small town somewhere, there was a sign at the far end of town: "I'd turn back if I were you!" We laughed, but besides that fact that that's an OZ warning, and we were still in Kansas, it's no joke. If we could turn back to Colorado, we just might do that! Except, I have to admit, I miss my babies! So Eastward Ho tomorrow!