Race Across The Heartland

Well, it's been two weeks since our last post and we have spent that time going through the great central plains, dodging storms all the way. We left Seibert, Colorado for Russell, Kansas and watched the thunderstorms in front of us for the whole trip. The thing about the prairie is that you can see forever, so it makes the skies look a lot worse than they probably really are. Every time it seemed that we were going to drive into a big black stormy area, the freeway would take a jog and we would miss the storm. Lots of lightning to look at though. We found a little campground in Russell, just off the freeway and settled in for a couple days.

Our first stop was the Russell Elks Lodge. Nice big building with some pretty friendly folks. The next day we did some geocaching in and around the town. We found eight caches. The neat thing about geocaching is that it is kind of "forced" exploring of the area. You find the little parks in town, sometimes get to see historical or geographic features you normally wouldn't find, and occasionally learn a little history. This town is right in the middle of the Kansas oil field and one of the caches was inside of the local oil field museum. Learned a little bit about the history of oil exploration in the area. Another one of the caches took us to a huge sink hole just off the freeway. The sink holes are caused when the oil is pumped out of the ground and the ground subsides.

After staying in Russell for two days we were off to Topeka, Kansas, the State capitol. We wanted to go to the Elks Lodge, but the address that we got from the BPOE Elks web site actually took us to a Lodge of the IBPOE of W. This was an organization that we first learned about a couple years ago in Florida when we accidentally came across one of the lodges there. This organization is the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. They are also referred to as the "Black Elks". For those who don't know the history, the Elks, formed in 1868, did not allow black members until the late 1960's, so in 1898 a group of black community leaders formed the IBPOE of W. According to their literature they have nearly half a million members nationwide. Their rituals and activities are very similar to the BPOE Lodges. The lodge we came across in Topeka was closed, however, the order does allow BPOE Elks to come into their club rooms - we, along with our friends David and Marianne Conner, went into one several years ago in Ohio. We were welcomed in and had a good time chatting with the folks there and learning a little about their order.

After a couple days in Topeka we moved east to the Kansas City area. Although Kansas City proper is actually in Missouri, we stayed just across the line in Merriam, Kansas, a suburb of the city. The locals talk about KCMO (Kansas City Missouri) and KCK (Kansas City Kansas) as the two parts of the area. The second day we were in town we went on one of our famous Elks Pub Crawls, even though the entire area was under a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch. We stopped in at four lodges on the Missouri side. One of the Lodges, the Northland Elks in North Kansas City had a tornado go through just a few days earlier. The storm had completely demolished a couple buildings right across the alley, but had only knocked a few tree limbs down at the lodge. Very lucky.

Every lodge we went to bought one round for us, so we ended up having at least two drinks in every lodge. We didn't get back to the coach until about 9 o'clock at night. Fortunately, no bad weather came up while we were out and about. We did have a good time and added some pins to our banner. By the way, our banner is up to nearly 300 lodge pins now!

That night we had a storm come through the area with really high winds. About 12:30 a.m. we heard this huge noise and the power went out. We hadn't felt anything hit the coach and it was dark and rainy out, so we didn't see anything outside. When we got up in the morning, the power was still out and we noticed that right across the road from us in the park a huge (five-foot diameter) tree had snapped off and fallen, hitting a trailer directly across from our coach. It was a small camp trailer and fortunately, the owner had gone away for the weekend so the trailer was vacant. The tree smashed down on the back of the trailer, near the bedroom - the weight of the tree lifted the front of the trailer completely off the ground. The limbs of the tree also hit the park's office/manager's house and punched a hole in the wall! It also fell right on the main power lines coming into the park, cutting power to the entire park. I'm not sure how, but the owners of the park had a tree service out there by 8:30 (on a Sunday!) cutting up the tree. We left at noon to go to a couple more Elks lodges in the area and do some sightseeing. When we got back to the park at about 6 o'clock, they had cleaned up most of the tree and the electricians (again, on a Sunday!) had restored the power to the park. Our last full day in KC we spent doing some geocaching in the area. Again, we found eight caches and had a really good time.

On the 13th of May we left the Kansas Ciy area for Saint Louis. The trip was windy and a little rainy, but not too bad. We settled in at the Casino Queen casino in East St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, right across the river from the St. Louis Arch. We had done most of the St. Louis tourist stuff when we were here a couple years ago, so we didn't spend much time in the city. We did go to a couple Elks lodges in the southern suburbs of St. Louis one day, and then a couple of Elks lodges on the Illinois side of the river on another day. We also stopped into the "Mother Lodge" of Missouri, St. Louis #9 for a visit. We had been in this lodge two years ago and found them to be pretty friendly. We made two very short visits to the casino while we were staying in their park, but didn't have much luck. They didn't have any nickel poker machines and the machines we did play didn't give us much back. The Casino Queen advertises the "loosest slots" but they weren't for us! One nice thing, Illinois bans smoking in all buildings open to the public, so the casino was non-smoking.

On Saturday, the 17th of May we left St. Louis and took a long 85 mile jaunt up to Springfield, Illinois, the capitol city. We will be up here for four days, then take off to Indianapolis and our rally at the Indy 500! After we got settled in at the park just south of the city, we headed to the Springfield Elks Lodge. We had learned that the Illinois State Elks Association was holding their State Convention in Springfield this weekend, so we thought we could meet a bunch of local elks. However, when we got to the Lodge there were very few Elks there. (A lot of folks at a wedding reception in their hall, but few Elks) Although the Springfield Lodge was the host lodge for the convention, the events were all downtown at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Today we are going to go out and do some sightseeing in the area. We will also probably do some geocaching while we are here.

In the last two weeks we have gone from Denver to Springfield, Illinois, just under 1,000 miles. We have dodged storms and been wet for the majority of the two weeks, but were lucky and didn't have any really bad weather. Even the wind that blew the tree down in KC wasn't really any stronger than some we have seen in the Indio area in the past. We have come to really rely on our weather radio and the Internet weather radar to keep posted on any possible severe weather. Most of the time we were in Kansas and Missouri the radar showed severe weather and tornadoes to the south of us, about 150 miles or so, but we never had any immediate threats. Hope our luck holds for the rest of the summer!

The next report will be after the Indy. Until then, enjoy every day!

Springtime in the Rockies

Our last episode found us in Silent Valley, in the mountains above the desert floor of Banning. On Thursday, April 17th we left Silent Valley to begin our trip east, with the first stop being in Laughlin, Nevada. We stopped in Laughlin for a weekend outing with our old friends from the Indio Elks Lodge camping club, the Desert Drifters. There were 10 rigs at the Riverside Resort RV Park, and three other couples staying in local hotels because they didn't want to take their rigs up due to the high fuel costs. On Friday night we had a cocktail hour with heavy snacks. On Friday, Jackie and I, Dave and Maryanne, and Bill and Lynette took the jet boat ride from Laughlin South to Lake Havasu and the London Bridge. It was about 70 miles down the Colorado River, much of it through areas not accessible by land vehicle. Although the ride was a little rough in places, it was still great fun. We had lunch in Lake Havasu, did a little quick shopping, then back in the boat for the ride North.

On Friday night we had a pot luck with the group that was a lot of fun and too much good food. On Saturday a bunch of us got together and took a ride up to Oatman, Arizona, an old mining town in the mountains East of Bullhead City. We had lunch and shopped for a few hours, then headed back to Laughlin. Saturday evening the group went out on the little riverboat from the casino for a dinner cruise. It was OK, although the food was only fair and the service not so good. At least the company was good and we talked most of the dinner with the others in our party. Jackie and I went over to several casinos during the evenings of our stay, but didn't do really well until the last night when Jackie hit a Royal on a poker machine and cashed out enough to make us even for the weekend. YEA!

On Sunday, while our friends headed South back to the desert, we packed up and headed North through Vegas towards Hurricane, Utah. Hurricane is a few miles North of St. George, Utah. One of the highlights of the trip is going through the Virgin River Gorge in the Arizona Strip. There is a 35 mile part of I-15 that goes through Arizona between Mesquite, Nevada and St. George, Utah. We had a good trip and checked into the Western Horizon resort in Hurricane for a week's stay. On Monday we did some geocaching in the area and found 11 caches. On Tuesday we took a drive to Zion National Park. It has been many years since I was in Zion and Jackie had never been there. The park is simply breathtaking - a huge red rock canyon with two thousand foot cliffs on both sides. We spent the whole day there taking in the sights. We did a couple of short hikes to scenery sites and took a lot of photos. It is nice because they don't allow cars in the main part of the park, but have a free shuttle that takes you all over the park. We really had a great time.

Wednesday we drove back down to Mesquite, Nevada for a little more gaming. Didn't do very well. We did stop at the Mesquite Elks Lodge for a cocktail and visit. On Thursday we took a drive North to Kolob Canyons, which is another part of Zion National Park. This is a very small area with beautiful canyon vistas. While we were up that way we drove around Cedar City, Utah and stopped at the Elks Lodge there. Friday we did some more geocaching and then went to the St. George Elks Lodge for dinner and drinks. They had karaoke that night, so we ended up staying until about 10 o'clock singing. Saturday we stayed around the coach and Sunday morning we packed up and headed for Salina, Utah, a little town on I-70 about 30 miles East of the I-15 junction.

The original plan was to spend a couple nights in Salina, then head East on I-70 to Grand Junction, Colorado for another couple nights stay. However, we were checking the weather forecasts and learned that there was a winter storm moving into the Rockies starting on Thursday. Since we knew we had to go over the Continental Divide on I-70 (11,100 Ft.) in order to get to Denver, we decided to cut our stays in both Salina and Grand Junction to one-nighters. This put us going over the Rockies on Tuesday in beautiful weather. The climb up the Divide was a little slow in places, but the scenery was spectacular. The weather was clear, but cool, so there was no threat of overheating, even with the long, steep climbs. We stopped at the rest area at the Divide and the snow on the sides of the road were as tall as the motor home. After we went through the Eisenhower Tunnel over the Divide, then I had to work to keep the coach from running away from me on the down side of the mountains. At one point there is a ten mile long, seven percent grade. The speed limit for vehicles over 10,000 pounds was 35 MPH and it was a really good idea!

We finally pulled into the Denver area in the early afternoon and went to the Westminster Elks Lodge. This lodge is about 10 miles from downtown Denver and has a great RV park. They have 40 spaces, many with full hookups. We got one of the full hookup spots and settled in for a five day stay. Wednesday we drove into Downtown Denver for some sightseeing. It was 81 degrees and I was running around in shorts and a tee shirt. We also did some Elks visitations, stopping in at the Denver and Arvada Lodges. The Denver Lodge (#17) was in a huge building, although they only have about 500 members. The bartender showed us around the building. The Arvada Lodge was in a building that had been an old Safeway store, but you couldn't tell after the way the remodeled it. The people we met there were very friendly and gave us a tour.

On Thursday morning we woke up to a gray sky and 40 degrees. At about 9 a.m. it started to snow and by noon we had about two inches on the ground. First time the coach had ever seen snow. We were sure glad that we had modified our plans to get into Denver early because we heard that they closed I-70 over the Divide Thursday afternoon and it didn't reopen until late Friday! By Thursday evening the snow turned to rain and by dark all the snow on the ground was gone. Since we were parked and cozy, it was a fun adventure to see the snow. That evening we went down to the Lodge for cocktails and their taco night. Great food, ate too much!

Friday we drove around some more, picked up our mail at the UPS center, and did some shopping at one of the local malls. Saturday we engaged in one of our famous (and fun) Elks Pub Crawls. The first lodge we went to was Aurora, however, we found the building closed and vacant. We later found out that they had been forced out of the building by the city and were in the process of trying to find another home. After that we went by the Littleton Lodge, the Englewood Lodge and the Lakewood Lodge. The Littleton Lodge was very friendly and had a very pretty lodge building. The Englewood Lodge was OK, small and not very friendly. In fact, we didn't even stay for our free second drink! The Lakewood Lodge has about 1,400 members and is the largest Lodge in Colorado. They had a great building and were also very friendly. We got tours of both the Littleton and Lakewood Lodges.

This morning we left Westminster and the Denver area and again headed East on I-70, starting to work our way across the prairie. We are now headed across the part of the country known as Tornado Alley and it is the height of the severe storm season. We will be sure to keep the weather radio tuned to the right channel and watching the skies. I told Jackie that it was like playing weather roulette - you just hope that your number doesn't come up! This afternoon we stopped in the little town of Seibert, Colorado, population 190. We stopped here because the mileage was right and there is a Passport America RV park. We got a full hookup, 50 amp pull-through site for $15. Hard to beat that when you are on a budget. Very small-town America here too - the guy running the park was very friendly and helpful. We didn't want to unhook the car, so we walked two blocks to the town's only store and when we walked in the lady behind the register said, "hi, you must be the new arrivals in space 2." I guess we had a stunned look on our face because she then told us that she and her husband ran the park and also owned the food store. For a minute we thought they had spies in the trees watching our every move and reporting on us.

We are only here for one night, then on to points in Kansas. Unless something spectacular happens, I will post again in a couple weeks. Until then, I hope we don't meet Toto or Dorothy!