Well, no … NOT. QUITE. YET … but we’re very, very close!
I have now visited FORTY NINE of our fifty nifty US states, and in the next few posts, I will recount the highlights, low lights, and in between dim lights. I’ve decided to dedicate a post to each “stop” we experienced in our 8 days of travel, beginning on the evening of August 21.
Rolling back a moment, to the hatching of the idea for this particular trip … as of last summer, there were a total of six states I had left to visit. Four of them held no special reason for my visiting, and rather than leaving random trips to chance, happening … whenever (!), I decided to try and include them all into one big road trip. The four states, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, and Nebraska aren’t necessarily close (although MT & ND _do_ border each other), but I planned to streamline as much as possible. I chose many stop-overs at cities / locations that were right off the interstates, etc.
Also … it’d been a really long time since my last visit to some friends who live just northeast of Kansas City, MO, in Liberty, and I arranged to begin and end the trip out of Kansas City International, so as to end the trip visiting our Liberty friends.
AND SO!! Booked the plane tickets in October of 2021, and although our airline changed the flight times a few times since then, frequent checks on our flight status for the last MONTH proved unchanged. UNTIL … 2 days before flying. An email warned of upcoming bad weather, and the possibility of delays or cancellation, and we were offered a chance to rebook at no additional cost, and subsequently rebooked from Monday AM to Sunday PM. I will spare you the blow-by-blow of the series of texts received all day on Sunday, but we finally arrived in Kansas City at about 12:15 AM (Sunday night.)
We chose a hotel with shuttle service to & from the airport, and arranged for the shuttle. The airport hotel was about a 10 minute ride …. and we caught some much needed winks before embarking on our 400+ mile journey the following day. Two ironic moments in the 8 hours we were there:
First, inquiring about hotel breakfast, the desk clerk actually said, “Well … what we got usually ain’t no good, so most people walk over to the Waffle House.”
And that’s ::urp!!:: where we went. First & last time fer me, JUST SAYIN’!
Irony #2, the hotel elevator was decorated as shown:
A short ride to the Airport Car Rental Center, a quick check in, and we were in our WHEELS, and ready to hit the road!!
Our first OFFICIAL photo op was just a few miles away, as we entered the state of Kansas. Although I’ve already been, Lulu certainly hasn’t, and the Welcome to Kansas sign was a MUST!
We made pretty good time, and arrived in Goodland, Kansas by mid-afternoon, Mountain time. (who knew that you could be in Kansas, and be in Mountain time?).
A simple dinner, the car was gassed up, and we were ready for our early start on Tuesday. We had a 10:40 AM train ticket to ride to the top of Pikes Peak, so we were on the road a little after 7 AM.
Less than 20 miles later, we were at our NEXT photo-op:
Or this …. LOL
As we drove along, the scenery is a whole lot of FARMLAND … ranches … lots & lots of corn fields. Every so often, we’d see herds of cattle such as
Another common sight on the long, long road into the Heartland of America was this:
Now, in fairness to the guy from jersey City, most of these were light brownish, and they were much further off in the distance. But after we passed a few fields full of these, Gerry said, “What ARE those??” I replied, “I’m pretty sure they’re harvested hay … I think they’re called ton bales.”
“Hay???!!??” exclaimed Gerry. “I thought they were SHEEP!!” And folks, he wasn’t kidding.
Me: LOLOLOL “No! Definitely not sheep!”
Or …. are they???
We arrived in Manitou Springs, CO in time for our Pikes Peak railway train, where we will pick up our story in the next post!