Today was a whirlwind of running around and around and around trying to button everything up and make the home front look halfway decent for our October return.
I spent hours cleaning up an organizing the garage, cleaning up an organizing the driveway, moving equipment and vehicles to where they would spend the next month just sitting.
My mom did a lot of work inside the house, as well as helping me outside a bit.
I finished mowing the lawn.
It actually took quite a long time before we were ready to leave. I was packed and ready to leave by about 5:00 p.m., I think, but my mom still had a bunch that she was trying to get done. I realized, that I needed to get a tire swapped because it was balding on one side, so we needed to leave by a certain time in order to get that to happen. I also needed to pick up my prescription refill.
But time got away, and things went a lot slower than hoped, and little Stephen got a bit frustrated with his mother for our later departure, as we ended up leaving without time to get the tire swapped over, as the tire place had closed by the time we got out the door, and I was also worried that I wasn’t going to be able to get my prescription picked up because supposedly they closed at 6:00, and we drove away from the house at like 5:56 p.m. Or something like that.
But I got over my frustration, and my mom was forgiving as she always is, and we were underway!
Honestly, it was one of our less effective departures, as right after leaving, we we’re at the neighborhood market for like 20 minutes, with me getting my prescription filled and picking up some things that we had forgotten to pack, or thought we’d forgotten to pack as we left. Since we were already on the road, we didn’t want to drive back home to grab stuff, so we just bought water and eating utensils and whatnot.
Then we drove for about 20 minutes or so and stopped again at the super Walmart in Jane Missouri. I don’t even remember why we stopped, except that I wanted to stop for something. So within the first hour our trip, we had stopped twice after already departing a good bit later than we were hoping to. 🙃
Not a very effective way of getting to where you’re going. 😅
Still, all is well, and we were on our way. We drove up to Webb City as usual, and then headed west on the 400 all the way to Wichita.
I always forget how long of a drive It is to Wichita. It feels like it’s so close, but it’s actually like 4 and 1/2 hours from our house. Something like that.
Initially, we had decided to do our normal route, which would have us stopping in Salina, Kansas for the night, and then proceeding all the way to my brother Jared’s house the next day. The first day being about a 6-hour trip, and the second day being about a 15-hour trip.
But we had also decided before even leaving on our trip, that we wanted the trip to be less of a drive shotgun run from place to place, and more of a leisurely vacation.
One of the places that I was thinking about stopping at was a place called Maroon Bells, Colorado. It’s a beautiful spot way up in the Rockies just outside of Aspen.
It was only slightly out of our way, and it would be a beautiful addition to what is normally just a really long, exhausting drive.
As we were approaching Wichita, I plugged in maroon bells to the maps, and I realized that it was only like a 10 minute difference between going the normal route that we always take, and going a route that neither of us had ever taken before, straight west from Wichita through Southern Kansas and then winding through the Rockies north up to maroon bells.
It would actually be fewer miles to take the new route that we’d never been, even though it would be about 10 minutes longer. So it would save gas, and it would be new scenery, and it would be fun just because our projected stop for the night instead of Salina would be Dodge City. 🙃
And goodness, Mr. Earp, If you’ve got a chance to go to Dodge City, and then to get The heck out of Dodge, why wouldn’t you? 😅
My mom liked the idea, so even though it would put us getting into Dodge City about 2:00 a.m. instead of into Salina about 12:15 a.m., which would mean we’d probably get less sleep, we both decided to enjoy the novelty taking a different path this time around.
So we drove and drove, arriving in Dodge City somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m., I think, where we got gas, learned that we had averaged just barely over 14 miles to the gallon for the trip, which was positive, especially since the first chunk of our trip was driving through a rainstorm and having to floor it to pass the gazillions of cars that were crawling along like snails. 😅
But we arrived at the Walmart supercenter, only two remember that since Walmarts aren’t open 24 hours anymore, there wouldn’t be a bathroom if either of us needed the bathroom in the middle of the night, so we drove back to the truck stop and parked in the truck stop parking lot, and called it a night!
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 