End of Summer, The Push for Pahrump

Hello again, glad to see you back.  Our last episode concluded on Thursday, October 11th, when we finally arrived back in the West after spending all of the summer in the South and Midwest.  We arrived at the Capulin RV Park in Capulin, New Mexico.  Capulin is a very small town on Highway 64, about 35 miles east of Interstate 25 in northeast New Mexico.  It is quite literally in the middle of nowhere.  It was, however, about the only RV park within a couple hundred miles of our last destination given the fact that we wanted to stay on the back roads for a while and see some places we haven’t been before.

Capulin is nearly 7,000 feet in elevation, and Jackie does not do well with altitude, so she was not feeling well after we got set up and settled in.  She spent the rest of the day on the couch, catching up on TV shows and I did some administrative work in the Man Cave.  We are going to be at altitudes of six or seven thousand feet for the next week or more, so hopefully she will acclimate a little and get to feeling better.

Friday, October 12th, we awoke to cold, about 45 degrees, and overcast skies.  The weather forecast for the day was showers and thunderstorms possible all day.  By 10:00 we were already getting light rain, so we decided to spend the day at home, except that at some point during the day we needed to try and get one geocache find for the day.  This was an open day on our days of the year challenge, and so far we have kept up with the challenge.  We didn’t want to let a little rain make us leave a hole in the calendar.

We were parked right next door to the laundry room at the RV park, so I started hauling some clothes over there in the morning.  We did two loads in the morning, and then another two loads after lunch and after our quick geocaching run.  After lunch it was raining pretty hard, but we knew that there was at least one cache that would be fairly easy to get, and it was close by.  The cache was at the Capulin Volcano National Monument, which is only about three miles from the RV park.  The Monument is on our list of things to do while we are here, but today was certainly not the day to do a full scale visit.  The entire top of the mountain, which is actually a 60,000 year old cinder cone, was sheathed in clouds.

However, the cache we were after was a type known as an Earth Cache.  An Earth Cache is similar to the old Virtual Cache, which are no longer allowed to be placed, in that there is no actual container or log.  You have to visit a place that has some geological or natural significance, and then answer questions about the site.  You email the answers to the cache owner to verify that you went to the site.  This one was quite easy in that we only had to go inside of the visitor’s center at the Monument and look up the answers to two questions on the educational displays inside the center.  We also had to submit a photo of one of us, with a GPS, in front of one of the signs in the parking lot.  We will probably come back tomorrow for a full tour of the Monument, the weather is supposed to be better, but we did go into the Visitor’s Center and get the answers we needed, and the photo, so we were able to log the cache.  Yea, got the day taken care of.

After our quick visit to the Monument we went back to the park and did a couple more loads of laundry.  We spent the rest of the day and evening in the coach.  About 6:00 the actual thunderstorms started rolling in and our weather alert radio started going off with severe thunderstorm alerts, and even one tornado alert.  Fortunately, the tornado alert was for much further south and west, near Sante Fe, so it was not real scary.  A couple of really strong thunderstorms passed by just a few miles from us, but didn’t have any that went directly over us.  Dodged the bullet again.  We went to bed with just light rain, but the alert radio went off a couple more times, until just after midnight when it finally settled down.

Saturday, October 13th, we awoke to partly cloudy skies and a little breeze.  The rain is gone, and according to the forecasts, gone for a while.  After lunch we went out to visit the Capulin Volcano National Monument.  We had gone to the visitor’s center yesterday, but didn’t take the drive up to the summit of the mountain.  We went back into the visitor’s center and spent a little more time looking at the exhibits there.  We also got a geocache that is located inside of the visitor’s center.  We needed one cache for today for our days of the year challenge, and we got it here.

After looking around the visitor’s center for a while we drove the road to the summit of the old volcano.  The road is only a few miles long and circles the cone as it goes up about 1,300 feet from the elevation at the visitor’s center.  Once you get to the top you can see the crater, which is not much to look at since the volcano has been dormant for 50,000 years.  The mountain is really just a very large cinder cone formed when the volcano erupted about 60,000 years ago.  If you are up to it, there is a mile and a half trail that circles the crater, but neither of us was doing well with the altitude and didn’t need a hike.  We took a few pictures and then went back down.

After we left the Monument we took a quick drive to a little town called Folsom, New Mexico, which was about 10 miles north of Capulin.  Although there appeared to be a few homes with people living in them, the town was basically a ghost town.  The downtown area was completely abandoned.  Once we saw Folsom we drove back to Capulin, visited a couple of the shops in the little town, then went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.       

Sunday, October 14th, we were packed up headed out of Capulin, New Mexico about 10:00, on our way to Las Vegas, New Mexico, about 140 miles southwest.  About 25 miles from Capulin we hit the little town of Raton and got on Interstate 25, headed south.  This was first time we have driven the coach on an interstate in about a month.  We finally had a day with little wind, and much of the trip was downhill, so for the first time in a couple of trips we got decent fuel mileage, 8.9 MPG.

We arrived at the KOA campground just south of Las Vegas about 12:30, got our spot and got settled in for a short, two day stay.  After we got setup we headed off to Walmart for some supplies.  After Walmart we drove through town and then back to the campground.  We have stayed here before, almost exactly a year ago, as a matter of fact.  We spent the rest of the evening watching TV.

Monday, October 15th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching.   Our first stop was a potential “first to find” cache which had come up in my search of the area.  The cache had only been out and published for a few days, and as of this morning, no other cachers had logged the cache as a find.  The website for geocaching doesn’t keep track of the number of FTFs teams get, but it is kind of neat to be the first to find a new cache.  We don’t get a lot of FTFs because you usually have to get up in the middle of the night, when the cache is first published on the website, in order to garner a first to find.  This one just happened to have been hidden in an area where there is not a lot of active caching.  We drove about 15 miles out in the country, found the cache rather quickly, and yippee - we were the first to find! 

After that we did another couple of hours of caching and got five more finds, for a total of six on the afternoon, with no DNFs.  It took us a while because some of the caches were kind of far out of town.  After caching we went back to the campground and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, October 16th, was another travel day.  It looked like we were going to have clear skies and moderate temperatures to drive in, and little wind.  We left the campground about 10:00, made a quick stop for some fuel at a station right near the campground, and then got on I-25 headed towards Albuquerque, about 125 miles southwest.  Once we got to Albuquerque we made another fuel stop to top off the tank.  I only got a few gallons in Las Vegas because the price was very high.  It was about 13 cents cheaper in Albuquerque, so that’s where we filled up.

Once we had full fuel we checked into the Enchanted Trails RV park, located on I-40 at the west end of the city.  Back in the 40's this place was built as one of the many “tourist trap” trading posts that dotted old Route 66 in Arizona and New Mexico.  It was a trading post until the late 60's, when the freeway was built and the trading post was no longer easily accessible.  They built an RV park behind the building and created the campground.  This is one of our Passport America parks, so we are staying here for three days for $60, a bargain compared to the KOA we spent the last two nights at.

Behind the registration building, at the entrance to the campground, they have a display of vintage travel trailers, and an early 50's model Hudson car, which is hooked up to one of the small trailers.  It is a very nice display of restored old trailers and a very nice, apparently all original Hudson.  We got settled in and set up for our three day stay and had lunch before heading out again.  Jackie wanted to get a haircut, so we first went to a nearby Supercuts.  After she got her haircut we did a couple of geocaches because we needed to have at least one on this date for our days of the year challenge.  We did one just down the street from the Supercuts, and then did one that was actually in the campground.  It was located in a large box, right in the middle of the display of vintage trailers I mentioned earlier.  Very nice.  After that we went back to the coach for cocktails and then relaxed the rest of the evening, including watching the Presidential debate.  Nasty, nasty politics.  I can’t wait to get to Pahrump so I can vote.

Wednesday, October 17th, we awoke to the rattle of the slide topper awnings.  The weatherman had told us last night the wind would be blowing today, and it was.  I am sure glad we are not traveling today.  We had lunch at the coach and went out for some geocaching and shopping about 1:00.  Within 90 minutes we had managed to get a dozen new finds, mostly because of what is called a power series, located less than a mile from the campground.  A power series is where a cacher hides a whole bunch of caches with similar names, often, just changing a number, and hides them along a route, sometimes a tenth of a mile apart, the minimum distance allowed between caches.  In this case there are 46 caches along a highway just down the street from our campground.  We got three regular caches that were also close by, but then did nine of the caches in the series and they were all about a tenth of a mile apart.  We only did a dozen because we got tired of the wind and the area we were caching in was desert and the sand was getting to us.

After our caching we drove to the Costco store to do some shopping.  We won’t be close to a Costco again until the middle of next month, so we wanted to stock up on some things.  When we got to Costco we noticed we were across the street from the mall, so before going into Costco we went to Penny’s for a while.  Each of us had gotten a $10 coupon by email from Penny’s a few days ago, and they expired early next month, so we wanted to use them.  We spent about an hour shopping before finishing up and heading for Costco.  Oddly, we each found an item of clothing, shorts for me, a top for Jackie, that was originally $22 but on sale for $14, so each of us paid $4.28 for our purchase.  Pretty cool.  After the Costco run we went back to the RV park, put away our purchases, and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Thursday, October 18th, we left the coach about 11:30 and drove into central Albuquerque for lunch at Landry’s Seafood House.  Regular readers may remember that back in August we had gone to the Aquarium Restaurant in Nashville for dinner with Ray and Suzie Babcock.  The Aquarium is one of the restaurants owned by the Landry’s group.  You may also remember that it was pretty much the “dinner from Hell” and was not a good experience.  In addition to our writing scathing reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor, Jackie sent an email to Landry’s corporate office complaining about the visit.  As a result of that email Landry’s sent us a $25 gift card for use at any of their properties.  We knew that there was a Landry’s in Albuquerque, so we thought we would give it a try. 

We finally had a good experience at a Landry’s.  We had gone to a Landry’s in San Antonio in June, and the service was poor and the food mediocre.  Then the disaster in Nashville.  Here in Albuquerque we had a very competent and pleasant server, the manager was very nice and attentive, and the food was outstanding.  I had a seafood pasta dish that was great, Jackie had a broiled seafood platter that she said was delicious.  This time we both wrote good reviews on the review websites.  My faith in Landry’s has been restored, for now anyway.

After our excellent lunch, which we both took half of home as leftovers, we went out to do some geocaching.  In the course of a little less than two hours we had gotten 26 new finds.  Yea us!  Of course, 21 of them were part of the series we had worked on the day before, but they still count for the numbers.  We got 26 finds and no DNFs, so it was a good day.  After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Friday, October 19th, yet another travel day as we work our way back to “home” in Pahrump.  We left about 10:00 and continued west on I-40 to Gallup, New Mexico, 140 miles from Albuquerque.  We checked into the USA RV Park, a very nice park that we use whenever we pass through Gallup, and got set up in the site in time for lunch.  We spent the rest of the afternoon in and around the coach doing chores.  We are still at 6,500 feet elevation and Jackie is still having a tough time with the altitude, so we don’t plan on doing too much while we are here.  We didn’t go anywhere outside of the park at all today.

Saturday, October 20th, we left after lunch to go out and find at least one geocache in Gallup.  Today was a “must cache” day for our days of the year challenge, but there were only a handful of caches in Gallup that are new to us.  We have cached here a number of times over the last few years, so we have found a lot of the caches in town.  However, someone is always hiding at least a few new caches, so we were able to get two new finds in the downtown area pretty quickly.  Once we got our finds for the day we made a quick stop at Walmart for a few things and then went back to the RV park to do our laundry.  The park had a very nice laundry facility, so we did our clothes and played some Skipbo while they washed.  Once we had the laundry done we went back to the coach.  I did a few chores, the most important of which was to check the air in the tires on the coach, but mostly we just relaxed the rest of the day.

Sunday, October 21st, another travel day.  We had the coach packed up and ready to go by 9:45 and we pulled out of Gallup, got onto Interstate 40 and set our sights on Williams, Arizona, 215 miles to the west.  It was nice that 20 miles out of Gallup we crossed into Arizona and time traveled again, getting back another hour as we went into Pacific time.  Technically, Arizona is in the Mountain time zone, but they don’t do daylight savings, so in the summer Arizona time is the same as Pacific time.

We arrived in Williams, Arizona right at 1:00 local time and checked into the Grand Canyon Railroad RV Park.  We have stayed in Williams a couple of times in the past, but this was the first time at this park.  It is fairly a fairly new park and is adjacent to the depot for the Grand Canyon Railroad, which runs old steam trains up to the canyon and back.  We got a nice paved, pull-through spot with full hookups. 50 amp, cable and wifi for $21 a day thanks to our Passport America card.  We will be here for three days.  Once we got settled in we did a few chores around the coach, but mostly just relaxed and didn’t do much.  I went out to get a Sunday paper, but other than that we didn’t leave the coach.

Monday, October 22nd, Happy Birthday to my brother David in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  He is the second native Arizonan in the family, having been born a couple years after we moved to Phoenix from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  We decided that since we had a couple of days in Williams, and the Grand Canyon is only an hour away, that we would make a quick day trip to the Canyon.  We are still well over 6,500 feet in elevation, so Jackie is not too keen on a lot of physical activity, so a nice drive to the Canyon, some lunch, a few pictures, and then back home seemed like a good way to spend the day.  We left the coach about 10:00 and drove north out of Williams on Highway 64.  The Grand Canyon is only about 60 miles due north of town.  On the way we stopped and picked up three geocaches, just because we knew they were there.  One was a little bit of a hike from a parking lot in Tusayan, the small town just outside the south entrance to the park, but we took our time and Jackie did OK. 

We entered the park about 11:30 or so with Jackie’s Golden Age pass, so we didn’t have to pay the $25 fee they charge.  Yea!  We decided we didn’t want to go to one of the cafeterias in the park for lunch, we wanted a nice lunch in a nice place.  We were astounded by the number of people and cars at the park, especially on a Monday at the end of the normal season.  We had to drive around the village loop three times before we found a parking spot.  Parking is really at a premium here, although they do have an excellent free shuttle service operating. 

We ended up at the Bright Angel Lodge, located right on the rim of the Canyon, in the Arizona Room, which was the lodge’s dining room.  The north wall of the dining room is all glass and looks right out over the Grand Canyon.  You just can’t beat a view like that for lunch.  Like most other commercial activities in nearly all of our National Parks, the Lodge and the restaurant are operated by a company named Xanterra.  We found that the service was excellent, the lunch menu was small, but comprehensive, and the food quality was outstanding.  I had a lunch grill sampler that had a small chicken breast, some pulled pork, and a couple of baby back ribs, and it was very good.  The ribs were some of the tastiest I have had.  They were way better than I have had at Applebees or Outback.  I would order a rack of them in a minute.  Jackie had a buffalo burger that she said was very good too.  The prices were reasonable and we left very happy.

Since Jackie didn’t want to walk around too much at the nearly 7,000 foot elevation of the canyon, we took a few pictures from outside the Bright Angel Lodge and then drove to the Visitors Center for the South Rim of the park.  This Visitors Center appears to have been built within the last few years and I have never been in it.  It is a very nice complex.  The last time Jackie and I were here was at least eight years or so when we came up here on the train from Williams with Barry and Colleen Cohen. 

A few facts about the Grand Canyon.  The park was established in 1919 and incorporates nearly 2,000 square miles of land.  Only a very small part of the park is accessible to visitors.  Our not being able to find a parking place should not be surprising since the park hosts about 4.5 million visitors each year.  The canyon itself is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide at it’s widest point, and nearly a mile deep from rim to river.  It took the Colorado River about 6 million years to carve the canyon to it’s present depth.

After checking out the displays and information at the Visitors Center we took a drive along the South Rim of the canyon, stopping at several places to take pictures.  We had a great day, although it was a little chilly, only in the low 60's, with a pretty brisk wind that made it seem colder.  We finally left the park about 3:30 and started back towards Williams.  We got back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, October 23rd, we decided to spend our last day at an elevation over 6,000 feet just doing nothing.  We actually did a few chores, but nothing major.  I had noticed a few days ago that our big patio awning, which is electric powered, was not working.  I had checked the fuse and found it to be fine.  I was going to try and trace the power to see where the problem might lie so the first thing I did was unplug the awning from the receptacle on the side of the coach.  I cleaned it, plugged it back in and the awning worked.  Five minute job.  Yea! 

Wednesday, October 24th, another travel day.  We left Williams a little after 10:00 and got back on I-40, headed for Kingman, Arizona, about 115 miles west.  This trip would take us from about 6,500 feet elevation to 3,400 feet, which would make Jackie’s life much more enjoyable.  Other than a pretty strong wind for the first 50 miles or so, it was an uneventful trip.  We made a quick stop to fill the fuel tank on the outskirts of Kingman, then pulled into the Fort Beale RV park.  This is a small, but very nicely maintained park right off of the Interstate at the junction with northbound Highway 93.  We quickly got parked and were all set up by 1:00.  We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the ability to move around without having to start panting.  Jackie got some work done “blinging” some clothes with sparkles and I did some administrative stuff.  We are only here two days before making our final push to Pahrump on Friday.

Thursday, October 25th, we left the coach about 11:30 or so and drove to the Kingman Elks Lodge for lunch.  Although we have driven through town several times, we have never stayed here in Kingman and never visited the lodge.  When we got here yesterday I looked up the lodge online and learned that they do lunch almost every day, so we went there for lunch.  We did a couple of geocaches while on the way to the lodge, the very first of which we had to DNF because we just couldn’t find it.  We arrived at the lodge about 12:30 and the bar was pretty full.  The lodge is located right across the street from a public golf course and, although they are not affiliated with the course, they get a lot of lunch business from Elks members who go there to play golf.  The food was not fancy, but it was very tasty and relatively inexpensive.  I had a grilled beef and cheese with green chili and Jackie had a patty melt.  

After lunch we went out to do some more caching in Kingman and we did a series of caches along old Route 66 through town.  Each of the caches was hidden near a point of historical interest in town.  We learned quite a bit about Kingman just from the caches.  We had to get at least one cache today for our days of the year challenge, but we ended up getting an even dozen finds, along with two DNFs.  One of our finds was number 4,400, another milestone for us.  Yea!  After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Friday, October 26th, we awoke to clear skies and a lot of wind.  We left Kingman about 10:00 and started northwest on our final push to Pahrump, our legal home of record, and what we consider to be the end of our summer 2012 travels.  The route we took out of Kingman was U.S. 93, which goes almost straight northwest from Kingman, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada.  Years ago I used to take this route a lot when I lived in Phoenix and traveled to Vegas or Laughlin.  It was the quickest, shortest route from Phoenix.  At that time the highway went down a series of switchbacks into the Colorado River canyon and then across the top of Hoover Dam, then back up a winding road into Henderson, Nevada. 

After Nine-eleven the Government halted all commercial truck traffic across Hoover dam for fear that terrorists might blow up the dam, causing untold damage and death downstream.  If Hoover dam failed catastrophically, all the other dams downstream would fail also.  Although RVs and busses could still cross the dam, they were subject to search before being allowed to cross, resulting in long delays.  The last time I used that route was when Jackie and I went to my dad’s funeral in Phoenix in November of 2002.  We took our old motor home from Indio to Las Vegas, picked up my brother Russ and his kids, and then drove down to Phoenix.  On that trip we were stopped and agents went through the storage compartments of the coach and we had about an hour delay.  We decided that it wasn’t worth the time to use that route anymore.

Fast forward to October 2010 when a brand new bridge is built across the Colorado River gorge, just downstream from Hoover dam.  Traffic no longer has to cross the dam and Highway 93 is once again open for unrestricted traffic, including commercial trucking, and becomes the shortest and easiest route to get from Las Vegas to Kingman and Interstate 40.  This bridge, which has the official, somewhat long-winded, name of The Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, was actually approved for construction in March 2001, six months before Nine-eleven.  However, actual construction didn’t start until 2005 and the bridge was completed some five years later.  The bridge is a concrete-steel composite arch that, at just over 1,000 feet in width, is the widest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere.  It is also 840 feet from the bridge to the river, making it the second highest bridge in the country.  Unfortunately, you can’t really see much when you drive over the bridge, so the statistics are lost to the traveler crossing over.  From the roadway it looks like any old concrete bridge.  They make high profile vehicles, which includes our motor home, drive on the inside lane, away from the rails.  I guess that is to help prevent one from going over the side in case of an accident.  By the way, since the bridge connects Nevada and Arizona, the names are from folks in each state.  O’Callaghan, a decorated Korean War hero, was Governor of Nevada for eight years in the 1970's and later editor of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.   Tillman was a well known professional football player with the Arizona Cardinals, and former player for Arizona State University, who gave up a multi-million dollar NFL career in 2002 to join the Army.  He became an Army Ranger and served several tours in Afghanistan.  He was killed there in 2004 in a friendly fire incident.

We arrived at the RV park in Pahrump, which is now called Wine Ridge RV Resort, about 1:30 and got registered and parked.  This used to be one of our Western Horizons membership park but a couple of years ago it was foreclosed on and the bank ran the park for a while.  This past year the same guy that bought Indian Waters bought this park, so now it is a public RV resort.  He is putting a lot of money in the park, but, like at Indian Waters, he is still giving a big discount to Western Horizon members.  We are staying here for $14 a night, which is a great deal.  A few dollars more than we paid as WHR members, but still a bargain.

After we got settled in and set up we took a drive to the UPS store which serves as our address of record.  We got to pick up our mail in person for the first time in a year and also meet the new employees, some of whom we only talked to on the phone.  When we got back to the RV park we went down to the clubhouse for happy hour at 4:00 and talked to some people that we knew.  Including the manager and her husband, there are two other couples here that we know from previous visits, either here or at other RV parks.  After happy hour we went back home and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Since we have reached the point we consider to be the end of our summer travels, it also seems like a good place to close this chapter and get it published.  We will be here in Pahrump for two weeks, so our next episode will be in about two weeks.  Until the next time, work on your inner happy and then let it out for the world to see.  Bye.

A Little More Time in Kansas

Welcome back loyal readers.  We closed our last episode on Monday, October 1st, as we spent our last day at the Spring Lake RV Campground in Halstead, Kansas.  We had expected rain overnight, but we awoke Tuesday morning, the 2nd, with clear skies.  We had no rain and it didn’t look like it was going to come today either.

We packed up the coach and left the campground about 10:30 and headed west on Highway 50 towards Hutchinson, Kansas.  We are going to the Kansas State Fairgrounds in Hutchinson for a Good Sam Samboree.  A Samboree with the Good Sam Club is similar to an Area or Chapter rally in the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA).  This particular one is the Kansas State rally.  We heard about it from some people who were checking in at the campground with us, but it sounded like fun and fit into our schedule nicely.

The trip to Hutchinson was only about 25 miles, we didn’t even hook up the car, Jackie just followed me to the campground.  The route that I picked to get to the fairgrounds, which is on the north side of town, had some construction and had a detour.  I was following the detour signs, which were taking me through some residential areas, and suddenly the detour came to some other road construction with a road closed sign!  They detoured traffic into a dead end.  Fortunately, I was able to see that I could drive around the road closed sign and make a turn onto another street, otherwise I would have been trying to U-turn a 40 foot coach on a narrow, residential street.

We finally got out of the construction and arrived at the Kansas State Fairgrounds.  They have a very nice campground with concrete streets, grass sites, full hookups and 50 amp electric.  The site was perfectly level and everything was easy to access.  This was better than a lot of the commercial RV parks we have been in.  Because we got into the campground about 11:30, we were all set up and ready to go explore by 1:30.  Our first stop was to go register for the rally.  Since we only found out about it a week ago, we thought we would have to pay the extra $15 penalty for not registering early, by mail.  However, the nice lady at the registration desk just charged us the regular $70 rally fee.  A Good Sam gesture.  Thanks.  All of the people we talked to around the registration area were very friendly.

After checking out the schedule for the rally, which really doesn’t start until Thursday, we went out to explore.  We drove around downtown Hutchinson and found that it looked very 1940's.  It was almost like a movie set.  Hutchinson is a fairly large city, about 43,000 population, which was founded in 1871 when the Sante Fe Railroad picked the site for it’s crossing of the Arkansas River.  In 1887 large underground rock salt deposits were discovered and salt mining remains a big local industry today.  The industry both mines rock salt as well as utilizes the tapped out mine areas for storage.  Salt mines that are no longer in production can be used for a variety of purposes.  The Hutchinson mine is home to Underground Vaults & Storage, a secure facility housing documents, artifacts, and other valuable material from around the world.  Although natural gas companies sometimes use salt caverns for storing reserves and a salt mine in New Mexico even stores radioactive waste, the Hutchinson salt mine has never been used for anything other than storage of records.  They do have a separate area of the mine where they do underground tours, and they have a party room which you can rent for special events.  They will even bring in food for you.

After driving around Hutchinson for a little while we took a drive to the town of Yoder, Kansas, about 20 miles south of Hutchinson.  Yoder is a small, unincorporated town of less than 200 people, that claims to be the center for the local Amish community in central Kansas.  The town was founded in the late 1800's by Amish immigrants.  We expected to find some shops and stores with Amish goods, and perhaps see some of the local Amish driving around the area in their buggies.  We were disappointed to find none of that.  There were a couple of shops, but they were all just selling commercial trinkets and collectibles, nothing Amish.  We didn’t see any sign of Amish at all, not even the telltale horse poop on the roads.  Certainly nothing like the Amish communities in Indiana or even the small enclave we found a few months ago in middle Tennessee.  We spent about a half hour there before driving back to Hutchinson. 

We filled the Jeep with fuel and stopped and ran the car through a car wash to get off the layers of mud we collected when it rained last weekend, and managed to get one geocache that happened to be in the parking lot of the car wash.  Once we had our chores done we went back to the campground and relaxed with the TV the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, October 3rd, we stayed around the coach until after lunch when we went down to the activities building to check out the vendors.  Surprisingly, they had rounded up about a dozen vendors, selling jewelry, clothing, pins and badges, and other stuff.  The RV park that we had stayed in before coming here, Spring Lake, also had a booth.  At 1:00 Jackie participated in a crafts class that she had signed up for yesterday.  The class was to make a small, decorative Christmas Tree.  I went back and stayed at the coach until she was done with the class, then picked her up and we went out to do some geocaching.  We were only out for a couple of hours, but managed to get nine new caches, with no DNFs.  Several of the caches were in old, local cemeteries.  As we have said before, they like to do cemetery caches here in the Midwest.

After caching we went back to the coach for happy hour and an early dinner before going back to the activities center for evening activities.  Tonight the rally organizers introduced the vendors and then we sat for an hour with the evening’s entertainment.  The entertainment was a group of a half dozen rally participants who had put together a sort of jam session.  It was a little corny and rural, mostly VERY old country music and some gospel, but it was entertaining.  This is a very farm oriented, country group and the majority of them appear to be a little older than us, so I guess this kind of stuff was right up their alley.  We mostly stayed because they were drawing for door prizes after the jam session.  We stayed, but didn’t win anything in the drawings.  After the drawings we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Thursday, October 4th, the first official day of the Samboree, but there have been things going on around the rally for a couple of days.  We went over to the activities building in the late morning to walk around the vendors one more time.  We went back to the coach for a quick lunch and then at 12:30 we went back over to the activities area for a Skipbo tournament.  For those that are not familiar, Skipbo is a card game that works well for two, four or six people.  It is one of the few card games that I enjoy playing, and Jackie and I play frequently, usually when we are doing our laundry.  When we saw they were having a Skipbo tournament at the rally we signed up.  Now we have played the game with other couples, but we have never played the game with partners, which is how the tournament is set up.  We have also never played what the other people there called “competition Skipbo” which has a lot of rules, the most important of which is that there is NO talking other than that, during his or her turn, a player may tell his partner which cards to play from their stack, but only during their turn.  The partner is not allowed to make suggestions or speak in any way and there is no other conversation allowed at the tables.  VERY quiet room when the game is going on.

Jackie and I think of ourselves a pretty good players, and we both won our first games.  By the way, we were not allowed to play as partners, partners are randomly assigned at the beginning of the tournament.  My partner and I won the semi-final match and moved on to the finals, where we lost pretty badly.  Jackie and her partner lost their semi-finals game.  Still, it was fun and we would do it again if the opportunity comes up.  After the card game we went to a meeting for first time attendees, which we are as far as Samborees are concerned.  After the meeting we went back to the coach and relaxed for a couple of hours before dinner.

During one of our runs between the activities center and the coach we noticed that the rally master's RV had been "decorated" by other members of the Kansas State Association.  It was really cute with lots of old underwear and crepe paper strung around just like when we used to "tee pee" someone'shouse back when we were kids.  Crepe paper is a lot easier to clean up than toilet tissue.  I also had to make a run to the UPS Service Center out by the airport to pick up our mail package.  Our mail box service at the UPS Store in Pahrump sends our mail to us when we request it.  We had not gotten mail for about three weeks, so we arranged for it to come to Hutchinson while we are here.  Mostly junk, but Smokey got a package from Belle Bullock.  Belle is Peggy and Vernon's little mini Australian Shepard and she and Smokey have met several times since she was just a few months old.  She is scared to death of Smokey and Smokey loves to just sit and intimidate the dog when we bring her in the coach.  Smokey outweighs Belle by ten pounds, so we have to watch the dog doesn't get hurt if the cat smacks her.  Anyway, Belle, with the help of her parents I'm sure, sent Smokey a little rubber rat to play with.  We actually got Smokey to bat it around a little before he got bored with it.

We had an early dinner and were back in the auditorium at 6:45 for the opening ceremonies of the rally and the evening entertainment.  They introduced all the State Directors and other Good Sam Club dignitaries that are at the rally and each of the state’s talked about their own Samborees that are coming up, either later this year or next year.  After the opening ceremonies the evening entertainment came on, which tonight was a brass quintet, made up of folks who play in the Hutchinson City Band.  Tuba, French horn, and two trumpets make up a quintet, by the way.  They played for about an hour, and were not terrible.  Not exactly our cup of tea as far as music goes, but we stuck around so as not to be rude and also because they were drawing more door prizes afterwards.  We actually won something this time - a three gallon water cooler.  Not exactly sure what we are going to do with it, but we won it!  After that we headed back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Friday, October 5th, it is really starting to get chilly here in the heartland.  Probably not for the locals, but certainly for us.  It was in the mid-40 this morning, with a brisk wind, and we are thinking we may have outstayed the good weather.  We didn’t have much going on with the rally, so we spent the morning in the coach taking care of chores.  I had a lot of administrative work to complete, mostly travel planning.  We are planning to go up into Oregon next summer and want to have some work done on the coach, interior remodeling mostly.  I needed to have a rough idea of when we might arrive in Oregon so I could start making arrangements with the shop we are going to use for the work.

About 2:15 or so we walked over to the activities area and walked around the vendor area again.  Jackie had bought some bling for one of her sweatshirts and had the lady at the booth put it on, so she had to pick up her sweatshirt.  We also wanted to be in the area at 3:00 for the ice cream social.  In case you hadn’t guessed by now, ice cream is a big deal at rallies.  As usual, people started lining up fifteen minutes early, never know if they have enough ice cream.  This one was a little odd in that instead of ice cream bars or sandwiches, they gave out pint containers of Kroger vanilla ice cream.  But, they didn’t have any spoons!  We took ours home and put them in the freezer for dessert later tonight.

We didn’t feel like going to the entertainment tonight, so we just stayed in the coach the rest of the afternoon and evening.  I finished my travel planning and now have our winter and spring plans plotted out.  I also made a few reservations for our travels this winter.  I contacted the repair shop in Oregon and told them what we wanted to have done and let them know we would be there in May, so put us on the schedule.  We are going to email them a detail list of the work so they can give us some cost and time estimates.  All in all, I got a lot done today.   

Saturday, October 6th, the last full day of the Samboree and we woke up to the threat of rain.  We stayed around the coach until about 3:30 or so when we went down to the activities area for raffle drawings.  The first part of the program was the recognition of awards.  One thing about the Good Sam Club and their Chapters, they like awards, patches and pins.  Chapter members, especially those in leadership positions, wear vests that are just covered with embroidered patches.  They give awards for attendance, most from a chapter, furthest chapter at the Samboree, most anything you can think of.  They were giving awards for Samboree attendance, they give a star for every ten Samborees you attend, and some were getting their 16th and 17th star, which means they have been to 180 rallies!  That’s dedication to the club.

After the awards they started pulling tickets for the raffles.  We had bought several sets of raffle tickets, one set for a 50/50 drawing that netted the winner about $140, some for a little flatscreen TV, some for several different Camping World items.  They pulled all the raffle tickets and we didn’t win anything.  Rats.  After the awards we went back to the coach for about an hour before leaving again to go have dinner.  We wanted to get an early dinner because we wanted to be back by 6:45 for the evening entertainment. 

We found a Mexican restaurant here in Hutchinson called Playa Azul, that was only a mile or so from the fairgrounds.  It good reviews on the Internet, so we decided to try it.  It was a nice little place, decorated much like most of the Mexican restaurants in California or Arizona, and all of the staff was Mexican.  They had a full bar and a very large menu with a lot of regular Mexican combos, as well as some very nice dinners, including a large selection of seafood.  The prices were very reasonable and the service was good.  The food was good, not the best, but certainly adequate and better than most Mexican we have tried east of the Rocky Mountains.  We had dinner and got back to the fairgrounds just in time for the evening entertainment.

The first thing they did was have a costume contest.  We had seen that in the schedule and weren’t sure if they were doing Halloween or something else.  Turns out it had to do with the theme of the Samboree, which was The Pumpkin Patch.  Several of the Chapters dressed up their members as pumpkins, scarecrows, vines, leaves and other such things and put on skits.  It was all quite entertaining and, of course, it was judged and patches were given to the winners.  They then introduced the entertainment for the night, which was a group called Sunday Drive.

This is a small country group, a husband and wife and the husband’s brother.  They only have a drum set and keyboards and the wife, Misty, does most of the vocals.  They have been in the business for a number of years and are apparently pretty big with the Inspirational Country Music crowd.  They put on a pretty good show with some interesting arrangements of some really old country music, along with some original stuff they wrote.  They only went about an hour, but it was the best entertainment of this rally.  After the show they had the final drawing for door prizes, but we didn’t win anything.  We then went back to the coach and watched TV until bedtime.

Sunday, October 7th, we were awakened about 7:00 by the sounds of some of the rigs around us packing up and getting ready to leave the campground.  We had elected to extend here one day, just because we were in no big hurry and there was a hot rod run in Hutchinson this weekend and I wanted to go see the cars.  By 12:30, when we finally left the coach, we were completely alone on our side of the campground, except for a couple of rigs way down on the end that also extended their stay.

We first drove to downtown Hutchinson for the car show.  There were well over a hundred rods and restored classics and there were some pretty neat cars.  There was the usual assortment of old Fords and 50's model Chevrolets, but, as with most car shows, there were a few oddities.  One guy had two AMC classics, a 1974 Gremlin, all original, and a 1978 Pacer, which he had restored chassis up.  There was also a very nicely restored and customized Studebaker pickup with a cute little wooden teardrop trailer.  We spent about 90 minutes walking around the car show.  We also managed to pick up one geocache which was right downtown, in the heart of where the car show was. 

After the car show we went after one more geocache, a virtual cache that was located at Hutchinson’s Space Museum, the Cosmospere.  The cache was outside of the museum and was at the display of an F-1 rocket engine, the same type of engine that was on the Saturn V rocket that launched all of the Apollo moon missions.  The Saturn V had five of these engines on the first stage.  We didn’t have time to visit the museum, but it is the only museum outside of the Smithsonian system that is allowed to possess and restore actual space program artifacts.  They have an extensive collection of authentic artifacts, including a Russian Vostok space capsule and the actual Apollo 13 command module which brought the crew of that ill-fated moon mission safely back to Earth. 

We made a quick trip to Walmart for supplies and then headed back to the coach so I could get the window screens off and the outside decorations put away in preparation for our departure tomorrow.  After I got my chores done we relaxed in the coach the rest of the evening.

Monday, October 8th, we packed up the coach and left Hutchinson about 9:30, heading southwest to our next destination, Liberal, Kansas.  Liberal is about 210 miles away, so we wanted to get an early start.  The trip was pretty uneventful, other than some wicked head winds, which at times made driving difficult and played hell with our fuel milage.  We made one stop for fuel and lunch in Dodge City, and arrived at the Seven Winds RV campground in Liberal just before 2:30.  We got set up, but didn’t go out to explore because we were pretty tired from the trip.  We just stayed in and watched TV the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, October 9th, the wind was still whipping when we got up, but at least today I don’t have to drive the coach in it.  We left the coach about 11:30 with the goal of heading for Hooker, Oklahoma, a small farming town in the panhandle of Oklahoma, about 18 miles south of Liberal, Kansas.  Now regular readers, and many of our friends in FMCA, will recognize Hooker as the home of our friends Don and Wanda Fischer.  Don and Wanda have been traveling in a motor home since the early 1990's, although never full time, and have been well known members of FMCA all that time.  We first met them at a rally back in 2006, our first full year on the road.

Don loves to give people hugs when he meets them and has always called himself “the hugger from Hooker.”  I think Don and Wanda are in their 80's, but they still travel some, although not as much as they used to.  Don has lived in Hooker all his life and actually lives only two miles from where his parents lived when he was born.  Last August we passed through Hooker and stopped for a few days, at the only RV park in town, and had a great time with Don and Wanda.  Hooker’s town motto, they sell tee shirts with it, is “It’s a location, not a vocation.”

We had called Don when we got into town yesterday and made arrangements to meet them for lunch at the Hooker Soda Fountain and Grill, a great little place to eat in downtown Hooker.  They actually live about ten miles out of town, but we had eaten a couple of times at the soda fountain, which is in the old Rexall Drug Store building, last year when we were here and loved the food.  Since we weren’t going to meet the Fischer’s until 12:45, we stopped at a couple of geocaches between the RV park and Hooker.  We picked up three caches before arriving in Hooker and were going to try to get one new one that had been placed in Hooker since our last visit.  However, we had to skip it because was right across the street from the schools and there were all kinds of kids running around because it was lunch time.  The grade school, junior high and high schools area all on the same corner.  We made a quick stop at the Hooker chamber of commerce to see if they had any new tee shirts before going to the restaurant to meet the Fischers.

We spent about two hours at lunch, which was quite good again, talking and sharing our experiences of the last year with Don and Wanda.  Last year when we were here Don had taken Jackie and I on long tours of the farms around the area, teaching us “city folk” about farming life.  He wanted to take us out again today to watch the corn harvest, but we didn’t want to put them out hauling us around again, so we declined.  We had a great visit and hope to see them at one of the FMCA rallies in the spring.  They are considering going to the January rally in Indio, or the March rally in Tucson.  We are going to both and hope to cross paths with them again.

After lunch we made an effort to get the cache in Hooker near the schools, but we were unable to find it.  Rats, a DNF.  We then set out to find some cemetery caches that were scattered around the surrounding countryside.  They were all about 10 to 15 miles apart, so it took us a while. We managed to find two of them, but we garnered another DNF with one.  By that time it was 4:30 and time to head back to the coach.  We had a great lunch, met some good friends, and found five new caches, along with two DNFs.  All in all, a pretty good day.  We spent the rest of the evening in the coach watching TV and relaxing. 

Wednesday, October 10th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in the Liberal area.  There were not a lot of caches in the city because we were here a year or so ago and found most of the caches close in to town.  They haven’t added many since then.  Even though we had to drive twenty miles north of town to find some caches, we managed to get nine new finds in a few hours, with no new DNFs.  After caching we stopped at the grocery store for a couple of things and then went by the Liberal Elks Lodge. 

We had visited the Elks in Liberal twice during out stay in the area last August, but were unable to find anyone who could get us a lodge pin on either visit.  Their web site said that they were open from 4:00 to midnight, Tuesday through Saturday, so about 4:30 we went by the lodge for a visit.  The place was locked up, no cars in the lot, no one around.  I guess we are destined to not get a lodge pin from the Liberal, Kansas Elks.  We had nothing else to do, so we headed back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Thursday, October 11th, another travel day.  We were packed up and on the road at 9:30, finally headed officially out of the Midwest and back into the west, or at least the Rockies.  Our destination today was Capulin, New Mexico, a little village of a few dozen folks in northeast New Mexico.  The trip was just under 200 miles, and other than another day of headwinds and uphill travel, it was a good trip.  We crossed into New Mexico, and therefore into the Mountain Time Zone, at 11:30 and promptly got the last hour back to use again.

We arrived at the Capulin RV Park at about 12:30 local time and got settled into our site.  This is a very small park and the office was closed when we came in, so I picked what I thought was a full hookup site and parked the coach.  As I was starting to hookup the sewer I noticed that the sewer cap was locked down and couldn’t be opened.  About then the owner of the park came back and came over and told me that the sites on the end, where I picked, didn’t have a working sewer.  They are connected to the sewer system, but the county hadn’t given them approval for all the sites they put on the sewer system, so they had to lock some off.  He relocated us to another full hookup spot and we got moved in.  The funny part was I moved the coach a couple hundred yards, from one spot to the other, with the slides out.  Lots of room and I couldn’t see any reason to bring them in.  Odd feeling though, to look in the mirrors and only see slides.

We will be here in Capulin, which is quite literally in the middle of nowhere, for three nights.  Since we have officially left the Midwest and are now back in a part of what is considered to be The West, it marks a good time to get this episode published.  We still have about two weeks of travel through New Mexico and Arizona before we get to our “home” in Pahrump, and I will publish again after we arrive there.  Until the next time, keep smiling, it makes people wonder what you are up to.  Bye for now.

Exploring the Heartland of America - Part I

Hello again friends. Glad you came back. We closed our last chapter on Friday, September 14th, when we arrived in Sedalia, Missouri for the Escapees RV Club Escapade rally. Although we have belonged to the Escapees club since we went full time in 2005, this will be only our second big rally with them. We went to an Escapade in Stockton, California back in 2007. We have done a lot of rallies with FMCA over the years, but not too much with Escapees.

We got into the rally grounds early, about 11:30, because we wanted to make sure we got parked today. They close the parking at 2:00, so if you arrive after 2:00 you have to find somewhere else to spend the night. The rally doesn’t actually start until Sunday, but we like the two early parking days to let us get settled and tour the local area before the rally actually gets going. This rally is at the Missouri State Fairgrounds and the venue has a number of large campgrounds with full hookup sites, water, power and sewer, which makes for a great rally. We have a nice grass site with a little shade and are parked right next to our friends, Ray and Suzie Babcock, who traveled with us here from Bowling Green, Missouri.

Once we got setup and had lunch we left with Ray and Suzie to do some local geocaching. We had to cache today to get one for our days of the year challenge. We got ten new finds, along with one DNF. After caching we drove around town for a while, looking at the great old historic center of Sedalia. While we were doing that we ran across the Sedalia Elks Lodge. Since it was 4:30 we decided to stop and have a cocktail.

The Sedalia Elks is Lodge 125, chartered in 1889, which makes it one of the older surviving Elks Lodges. It is in a great old building that they built in 1926. The outside looks like a very upscale residence. It has a great clubroom and game room downstairs, and most of the second floor is taken up by a very pretty dedicated Lodge Room. We got a tour of the place from one of the Past Exalted Rulers and also met the lady who is the current Exalted Ruler. The lodge was very friendly and bought our second drink for us. After our drinks, and buying lodge pins, we went back to the fairgrounds. We had another cocktail sitting outside with Ray and Suzie, and then went back to our coach and had dinner on our own and then relaxed with the TV the rest of the night.

Saturday, September 15th, the weather forecast called for a chance of showers and the temperatures had fallen into the high fifties. Since there were no rally activities for the day, we left with Ray and Suzie about 10:30 for some more geocaching and exploration of Sedalia. Our first stop was the registration center for the rally so we could pick up our name tags and goody bags. Once we got those we started geocaching, starting with a couple that were right on the fairgrounds property. Once again we had ten new finds within a couple of hours, along with another new DNF. One of the caches took us to a resale store and after finding the cache we went in for a little shopping. I found a very nice winter coat which appeared to be brand new for $22. My guess is that it would retail for over $200. Sometimes caching takes you to great places.

We then stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was called Joyous China Restaurant and had been recommended by someone at the Elks Lodge yesterday. The food was typical Chinese Buffet, but very tasty. Lunch was only $4.99, so it was a great deal too. We ate way too much, but we went away full. We then made a Walmart run before going back to the fairgrounds. We had cocktails with the Babcocks, but because we had such a big lunch we didn’t do any dinner. We spent the rest of the evening in the coach watching TV.

Sunday, September 16th, the first official day of the 52nd Escapees Escapade. We started the day by leaving the coach with Ray and Suzie at about 10:30 and driving over to the activities area for shopping. The vendor area opened this morning so it was our first opportunity to browse the RV related merchandise on sale. We actually had a fairly busy morning. I bought a new concealed handgun holster that I have been looking at for a while. As a retired law enforcement officer I have a Federal concealed carry permit that allows me to carry anywhere in the United States, regardless of state laws to the contrary. It doesn’t apply, of course, to airports, Federal Buildings, and private property which has been posted “no weapons,” but it does allow me to carry if I want most anywhere in public. I actually rarely do carry a weapon, but there are times and areas where I feel more comfortable armed, and I needed a better concealed holster.

I also bought a new digital tire gauge for the coach, but the big purchase of the day was new phones. Jackie has had her Blackberry smartphone for a couple years now and has some issues with it. Since she was eligible for an upgrade she stopped by the Verizon booth and ended up getting a new Motorola Razr smartphone with the Android operating system. Since our tablet is Android, she is pretty familiar with the system and a most of the apps we like on the tablet will work on the phone now too. Not so with the Blackberry system she had. I ended up getting a new phone too, since it was a free upgrade, but I still just have the old standard flip phone.

We had lunch right there on the fairgrounds. Most rallies we have been to that take place on fairgrounds require the rally organizers to use existing food vendors that are on the grounds. That always results in wildly inflated prices, like $7.00 hamburgers. At this rally the local Knights of Columbus Lodge brought their food truck and set up shop in front of the vendor building and are making a killing selling food at reasonable prices. They are also doing an inexpensive breakfast every morning. Good move Escapees!

After lunch we spent a little more time at the vendors before going back to the coach for a break. At 3:00 we went to the arena for the opening ceremonies for the rally. They introduced the rally organizers and the Escapees staff and had a showing of banners for various chapters of Escapees, but the big reason everyone came was they gave away a bunch of door prizes. Most were local restaurant and store gift certificates, but they were worth trying for. They also had two $500 cash awards. None of the four of us won anything today, but they do this all through the rally, so there is still hope.

Once the presentations were over we all went back to the coach and relaxed for a while. We had happy hour outside about 5:00 and then left about 6:15 to go back over to the arena for the evening’s entertainment. Tonight was comedian Yakov Smirnoff. Yakov has his own theater in Branson, Missouri, and we had seen him there during a trip in 2006. He, along with his parents, immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine, Soviet Union, in 1977 at the age of 26. At that time he was an art teacher and spoke little English. In 1986 he had already become a well known comedian and became a naturalized American Citizen. He opened his theater in Branson in 1992 and has been doing well every since. He put on a great show that was mostly stand-up comedy, but also part inspirational. He has this theory of life that is based around love and laughter, and he spent a lot of the show talking about how it all comes together. It was a really good show. He was only supposed to be on for an hour and half or so and he went almost two hours. By the time we got home it was almost 10:00. Great day at the rally.

Monday, September 17th, we had an early lunch at the coach and left about 11:00 for some seminars. Jackie and Suzie went to a session on how to use Picasa, a photo management software program, and Ray and I went to a session on tire safety, put on by a retired tire company engineer. Jackie said hers was good, and the one I went to was very educational. There wasn’t a lot that I didn’t already know, but there were a few things brought up that made for good reminders.

After the seminars we all went back to the vendor area for a while to do some shopping. Jackie had some questions about her phone and I bought a few little things for the motor home. After a little break at the coach all four of us went to a seminar on smartphones and applications. That was very informative, although they went through the material so fast I missed some of the information. It was still a good session, especially since one of the phones that they did the demo on was the same as the one Jackie just upgraded to.

After that session we took a cocktail break at the coach and then went over to the arena for the prize drawings at 7:00. Once again they gave away a lot of stuff, but none of it was for us. We left the arena at 7:45, after the drawings, to go get something to eat. The entertainment for the evening was tenor doing Broadway and opera tunes, and none of us were really very interested in hearing him. We went out to the nearby Golden Corral buffet for a late dinner. I say late, but it was only a little after 8:00 when we got there and the staff were already in the process of cleaning up for the night. It was really disgusting to have one of the staff cleaning the filters over the grill while there was still food on the hot table right under it and customers in the restaurant trying to get food to eat. We brought that to the managers attention, but she didn’t seem very interested. A lot of the food was getting cold because they had started to shut down the steam tables, and the selection got smaller and smaller as time went on. I usually like Golden Corral, but I will make sure that I never go to one close to closing time again. After dinner we went back to the campground and just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, September 18th, Jackie and I were up, showered and out of the coach by 7:30 a.m., headed over for breakfast and an 8:15 seminar about Verizon cell phone issues. Although I thought I detected slight tremors in the space-time continuum, the universe didn’t collapse and we had a nice breakfast of bacon and egg sandwiches. We were up that early, and as you might guess it is rare, because the speaker, Pete Schmitz, is a very dynamic and interesting speaker. He has sort of taken on the role of ombudsman for Verizon Wireless with regard to RV customers. He is very knowledgeable and very helpful and we wanted to attend his session. We had heard him once before in Phoenix at the Good Sam rally back in March, but we missed some of the things he was talking about. In addition, things are always changing in the cell world and we wanted to hear the latest. We figured since we were going to be up anyway, we might as well have a light breakfast. They serve breakfast here at the rally every morning.

Ray and Suzie went to the seminar also and it proved to be very interesting and helpful. Ray is considering buying a new iPhone and wanted to hear about Verizon’s plans for smartphones. After the session we went back to the coach for a brief rest and then the four of us went out to explore and also to do some more geocaching. We didn’t have anything going on at the rally, that interested us, for the rest of the day. Our first destination was Whiteman Air Force Base, located about 20 miles west of Sedalia. Since Ray is retired Air Force he is able to gain access to military bases and we both wanted to visit Whiteman.

Whiteman AFB was founded in 1942 as Sedalia Army Air Field as a training field for glider pilots. In 1951 the new Strategic Air Command selected the base to be the home of the first wing of the new B-47 bomber, the first U.S. all-jet engine bomber. In 1955 the name was changed to Whiteman, in honor of George Whiteman, an Army Air Corps P-40 pilot killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor and honored as the first person killed in aerial combat in WW-II. In the 1960's the base became one of the control centers for the nation’s Minuteman Missile defense system and this mission remained with the base until the mid-90's. However, the reason we were anxious to visit the base is that in 1993 Whiteman became the headquarters of the only Air Force Bomb Wing to fly the B-2 Sprit stealth bomber. There are only 20 B-2 bombers in the entire U.S. inventory and all are housed at and flown out of Whiteman AFB.

Developed in the 1980's, the Spirit was initially developed as the replacement for the venerable B-52, a 1950's design. However, when the price per aircraft spiraled to over $2 billion, the planned order for 137 was pared back to 21 operational craft and the B-52 is still in service. What makes the Spirit special is it’s stealth design and “flying wing” configuration. It is nearly invisible to radar, even at close ranges. The craft has the wing span of a B-52, but the overall length of an F-15 fighter. It is not supersonic and has no defensive armament, relying on it’s stealth to get in and out of the target area safely. One B-2 was lost to a crash on take off in Guam in 2008.

Over the last few months we have been traveling with Ray and Suzie and during that time have gone onto several military installations. Normally, Ray drives up to the gate, shows his ID card and that, along with the base sticker on his car, gets access to the base. On one occasion Jackie and I had to show our driver’s license to the guard, but that was it. Today Ray drove up, gave the guard his ID and ID for the rest of us and he told us we had to go into the visitor’s office and get a pass. Jackie and I had to give our driver’s licenses to the guy in the office, he typed everything into the computer and took our photo. All of this was put on a paper pass, which included a barcode, and then we went back to the gate. The guard scanned Ray and Suzie’s military IDs and then our paper passes. We finally did get on the base, but it was pretty complicated.

Of course, the reason for the added security is pretty apparently. The entire long range stealth attack capability of the country is housed at this one base. We drove around the base for a while and noted that the fence alongside the road that paralleled the flight line was not just the usual six foot chain link with a strand of barbed wire. It was ten foot steel

fencing with multiple strands of barbed wire, alarm wires and other intruder devices. The gates were all double entry, meaning you go through one gate, which has to close before the other opens. Very high security. Each B-2 has it’s own hanger along the flight line and there were several of the hangers open, or partially open, so you could see the plane within. One was actually parked on the line, outside of the hanger. They don’t make a secret of the fact that the planes are there, they just work to make sure you can’t get to them unless you are authorized. Since this is a strategic strike base, I am sure that there are a few nukes behind those fancy gates and fences too. The base is also home to several military reserve units, including an Air Force A-10 attack squadron and an army Apache attack helicopter unit. After driving around the base we visited the Exchange, the department store on the base, for a while and then headed out to do some geocaching.

We found one cache near the base, but we did most of it back in Sedalia. We managed to get another ten new finds, one of which was a cache that we had DNFed a couple days ago. We noticed that the owner had replaced the cache, which was missing when we looked for it, so we went out and captured the find. We like fixing DNFs. We also had a new DNF for the day. Oh well, net zero on DNFs. After caching we went back to the coach for a brief rest.

About 4:30 we went out for dinner with some friends of Ray and Suzie’s, John and Jana. They are former neighbors of Ray and Suzie’s from back in California and they stay in touch. They happened to be at this rally, so we all went out to dinner. We went to a local restaurant called Little Big Horn Steakhouse. The restaurant had been recommended by several people and had marketed themselves with a flyer in the goody bag that was given out when you arrived at the rally. We had seen the place a few days back because there is a geocache in their parking lot, which we found.

Although the place was recommended to us, I would not recommend it to anyone else. Although the six of us got seated as soon as we arrived, the hostess was not especially friendly, in fact she made a snippy comment, something like “one at a time, OK?” when two of us inadvertently asked the same question at the same time. Our regular waitress was fine, but for a restaurant that advertises as a steakhouse they had a very limited menu. Prime rib on the weekends only, and only three other cuts of beef on the menu. Jackie had a strip steak and I had a rack of ribs. It was really odd because her steak came out seared rare, very red in the middle, but it was very dry. I have never seen a rare steak be dry. She also said it had almost no taste and the texture was odd, almost like it had been over-tenderized. My ribs were way over done and dried out as well. None of the other people at the table had steaks or ribs, and they didn’t have any big complaints about their food. I would not bother with the place if you ever find yourself in Sedalia, Missouri. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Wednesday, September 19th, the weather was still chilly. Summer seems to have decided it’s time to leave. It felt colder because the wind was blowing pretty hard. Some of the gusts were very strong, so I decided to put in the window awnings, just to be on the safe side. We didn’t leave the coach really early, we didn’t do breakfast. The universe is back in sync again. We left the coach about 11:00, after an early lunch, and went down to the vendor area to take care of a few last minute things. This is the last day for the vendors, although the rally continues through tomorrow. Ray wanted to go to the Verizon booth and order his new iPhone 5 and I needed to pick up a door prize I won at one of the insurance booths. That turned out to be a “claims kit”, a little zipper envelope with a pen, paper and a disposable camera. I guess you carry it in your car in case of an accident you can document everything.

We also went over to what the rally calls “The Row” which is the area where all of the various Escapee Chapters, groups and RV parks set up booths. It is similar to the Chapter Fair at FMCA rallies, except that at Escapees they stay set up for the entire rally, not just a couple of hours. They had a little game where they gave each of us a little card that looked like a Bingo card, with the logos from 24 of the chapters at The Row printed on it. You had to go around the room and get each of the chapters on your card to mark your card. Once you got the card filled you put it in a drawing for some prizes. Jackie and I did our cards in about 20 minutes or so and then we waited around for the 2:00 drawing. We didn’t get anything. Oh well. After the drawing we went back to the coaches and relaxed for a while. Jackie baked her chili reallno casserole for dinner and Ray made some great Mexican rice to go with it. We had dinner about 5:30 in our coach and it was great. Just before 7:00 we went down to the arena for the night’s door prize drawings and then the talent show. We didn’t win any prizes. One last chance tomorrow.

The talent show, called Ham O’rama, is an Escapade staple, they have one at every big rally. One of the participants was a guy that we know from the Western Horizons park in Ehrenberg, Arizona. His name is Brad and he was the staffer who put on the Friday night karaoke at the park. We decided to stay for the entertainment to support him, and to see what else there was to offer. Most of it was OK, if a little corny, but they tried. There were a couple of people playing instruments, a lot of singers, and a couple of people who did readings. One lady got up and did a stand-up comedy routine that was not too bad. Brad did Wonderful World in a Louis Armstrong voice and was very good. We left after Brad’s performance, but they had been going for almost two hours by then and there were still people waiting to go on. We went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Thursday, September 20th, the last full day of the rally. We got up and out of the coach fairly early so we could make an 11:00 session that was a lecture by one of the Public Information Officers from Whiteman AFB, talking about the base and the B-2. It dovetailed nicely with our visit to the base a couple days before. The young female Airman that gave the talk was polite and informative, but she didn’t give much more information that we already knew. Most everything else would probably be classified. After the lecture we watched the pet parade, which only took about a half hour. Lots of cute dogs, some in some really neat costumes. My favorite was a Papillon,

a small fuzzy dog with big ears, that had an actual tiny, tooled leather saddle with a doll riding on it’s back. I have seen dogs with dolls strapped to their back before, but I think this is the first time I have seen one on an actual leather mini-saddle.

After the pet parade we picked up Suzie at the coach, she didn’t go the morning activities, and all went out to lunch at Applebees. Ray and Suzie had to run some errands after lunch, so we went to the local Penny’s store and shopped for a little bit after lunch. At 3:00 we all were back at the fairgrounds and attending the closing ceremonies for the rally. They were giving away the grand door prize, a commercial caravan package worth over $2,000, but we didn’t win it. Went to every door prize drawing and didn’t win anything! Poop. We did learn that there were 587 rigs in attendance at the rally, with over 1,200 attendees. Not a bad attendance in these economic times. After the closing ceremonies we went back to the coaches for the rest of the night. Jackie had a bad headache, so she laid down for a nap and I spent some time putting things away to be ready for tomorrow’s travels. I had cocktails with Ray and Suzie and then we just relaxed in the coach the rest of the night.

Friday, September 21st, another travel day and the end of the rallies for this year. We were packed up and on the road just before 10:00. Ray and Suzie had left about 9:00. We had thought they might travel with us for a little while longer, but they decided they needed to be back in California by the 6th of October, so they were going to hurry back. We are taking a more leisurely trip back, looking to be in Pahrump by the 26th of October.

Today’s trip was about 160 miles and took us into Kansas to Lake Melvern and a Corps of Engineers RV campground. Lake Melvern is about 80 miles southwest of Kansas City. The Corps of Engineers has a number of very nice RV campgrounds at various lake and river projects around

the country. We have stayed a several in the past and have always been impressed by how nice they were. We arrived at Coeur d’Alene Campground on Lake Melvern about 1:30 and quickly moved into our site. We had reservations, so there was no delay or need to look around for a site. We have a large pull-through site on the

hill above the lake, with 50 amp full hookups, and it costs $10 a night! Great site, great price. The price is actually $20 a night, but if you have a Golden Age Pass, which Jackie does, it is half price.

The wind was blowing very hard, so once we got set up we just settled in and enjoyed the peace and quiet of our own coach. Jackie had put dinner in the crock pot before we left, so we had a nice dinner and watched TV the rest of the night. We will be here for five days, a great time to relax and unwind from the hubbub of the rally circuit.

Saturday, September 22nd, a beautiful Kansas fall morning. The wind had died down to a brisk breeze and the temperature was in the low 60's when we woke up. We relaxed around the coach all morning, taking care of some chores and just enjoying the quiet without any time constraints or commitments. I did some trip planning, trying to find a way back to the west without having to spend the entire trip going back through places we have been before. We had lunch and then packed up our dirty clothes to go out and do laundry. It has been over two weeks, so we have quite a pile of clothes to wash. We are kind of out in the wilds of east Kansas here, surrounded by small, farming towns. The nearest laundromat we could find was in the little town of Waverly, about eleven miles from the campground.

We arrived in Waverly and found a very quaint, but typical small prairie town. Most everything in the downtown area was closed up and the buildings vacated, but we did find the laundry in a little shack on main street. They did have five working washers, which was just what

we needed, and despite the rundown appearance of the buildings, the machines were pretty clean and only $1.25 to use. It was a bit nonstatic to find two old 50's style kitchen tables in the building being used as folding tables. They looked just like the chrome and Formica tables I remember from my childhood. The only difference was the one in our house was yellow and these two were red and green. We got the laundry started and played cards while the clothes washed and dried.

In less than two hours we had our clothes washed, dried and folded and we were good for another couple of weeks. On the way back to the campground we stopped and did some geocaches, including one in a small, local cemetery. We only did three caches, all of which were on our way back to the coach. I fixed a nice pot of chili for dinner and then we spent the rest of the evening in the coach, watching TV and relaxing.

Sunday, September 23rd, we decided we needed a stay at home day, so we did. I spent most of the day in the “Man Cave” and did some trip planning and other administrative work. I knew we were going to be back in Pahrump on the 26th of October, we have reservations at our old Western Horizons park. However, I had still been undecided on the route we would take. I finally settled on the “back roads” option instead of the freeway. Back roads still means Federal numbered highways, but rather than just jump on I-70 or I-40 and go back through places we have been several times in the past, we would stay on the lesser roads and go straight west through Kansas, stopping in towns we have never seen. Jackie also got a few chores done, but mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed a quiet day on our own.

Monday, September 24th, we had a great day with lots of sunshine and moderate temperatures in the 70's, so we decided to go caching. We left the coach after lunch and did some “local” caching, which in the wilds of Kansas means about a 20 mile radius of the campground. It took us about three and a half hours, but we managed to get ten new finds, along with a couple of DNFs. We drove through several of the small, farming towns scattered around our location, including Melvern, Quenemo and Lyndon. Melvern has a very small downtown that is mostly abandoned and Quenemo has no commercial area at all. Lyndon is the county seat, so it is a little bigger and appeared to be doing a little better.

We also visited the other Corps of Engineers lake, Pomona Lake, which is about 20 miles north of Melvern Lake, where we are parked. There is a big State Park on that lake which also has full hookup sites, although it is not as nice looking a campground as the one we are in. After caching we went back to the coach and had dinner before relaxing the rest of the night.

Tuesday, September 25th, we left the coach fairly early, a little after 10:00, for a drive to Topeka, the capital of Kansas. Topeka is only about 35 miles north of our campground on Highway 75, and we have never been there before. It only took about 45 minutes to get to the edge of town and once we got there we started out by doing some geocaching. By the end of the day we had gotten eight new finds with no DNFs. Once our caching had moved us to a point near the downtown area we stopped caching and did some exploring.

Topeka, founded in 1854, is a city of nearly 130,000 and lies on the bank of the Kansas River. According to my research the name Topeka is a word in the local Kansas Indian language which means “to dig good potatoes.” I had expected a Civil War general or

Indian chief, not a potato reference. Go figure. I guess there was a tuber, very similar to a potato, that grew in the area and was a staple for the local Indians. The downtown area is an interesting mix of very old buildings and newer structures. Like many large cities today, there is very little retail downtown, mostly commercial and financial buildings. The State governmental center is immediately adjacent to the old downtown area and covers about twenty square blocks. The capital building,

built in the early 1900's, is apparently undergoing a major facelift as the entire dome part of the structure was surrounded by scaffolding. Made it kind of hard to get a decent picture.

One of the most famous historical events associated with Topeka is the Brown vs. The Board of Education case, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision which eliminated the “separate but equal” doctrine for public education. I was familiar with the case from my college courses years ago, but had forgotten that the case was centered in Topeka. The old Monroe Elementary school which was the origin of the case is now a National Historic Site.

After driving around for a while and getting feel for Topeka we decided to get some lunch. Prior to leaving the coach I had found that there was one restaurant in Topeka that had been featured on Guy Fieri’s Food Network show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

We are big fans of that show and like to visit Triple D restaurants when we can. This particular place is called BoBo’s Drive In, on 10th Avenue and Mac Vicar Avenue, and is a true, old fashioned drive in. The restaurant was established in 1948 and has been at this same location since 1953. It is very small and very old looking, with a tiny little inside dining room and a large, canopy covered car hop lot out back. The inside has about five small tables and a little eight seat counter. They still provide car hop service, just like in the old days, and we chose to eat in the car. I can’t tell you how long it has been since I have eaten lunch in a car off a window tray!

Although the place looks like a bit of a dump on the outside, the ratings sites on the Internet all gave it high marks and great praise. However, had it not been a Triple D featured place,

I doubt we would have given it a second glance if we were just driving by. The menu was typical drive in fare, hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, and the like. We both had hamburgers, along with fries and onion rings. The hamburgers were outstanding, clearly hand-formed and cooked crispy done on a flattop. The onion rings were also some of the best I have ever had. The fries were a more modern, coated variety that were just so-so. However, in total it was a great dining experience to be able to have the little tray in the window again and the food was excellent. I can highly recommend BoBo’s if you want to go back in time a little when you are in Topeka, Kansas.

After lunch we did a little shopping. It has been a while since we were close to a big city, so we hit a couple of craft stores as well as Sam’s Club and Walmart. Once we had completed our shopping we drove back south to our campground, getting there just as the predicted rain started to fall. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the coach, listening to the thunderstorms rumbling around us.

Wednesday, September 26th, we awoke after a bit of a restless night. Before we went to bed last night I had been watching the thunderstorms on the computer and they were going all around us, but not on top of us. About midnight that changed and we had about three hours of intense thunderstorms. High winds, torrential rain and lots of lightening. At one point I got up and put down the satellite dish just to be on the safe side. We didn’t have a lot of trees around us and I didn’t want to attract any stray lightening bolts. When I got up in the morning we actually had a few leaks in the coach, probably brought about as a result of the high winds blowing the rain up under the slide toppers and then in the slide from there.

The weather was actually pretty nice by the time we woke up, partly cloudy with just a little breeze. We had to go out and find at least one geocache today because it was a blank day on our days of the year caching challenge. We left after lunch to get a couple of geocaches fairly close to home. We ended up getting three new finds in about an hour and managed to get the Jeep coated in mud. There are a lot of dirt farm roads in this part of Kansas and the rain last night really turned them to soup. I actually got out the hose after we got back to the coach and tried to rinse off the big chunks of mud. By mid afternoon the shade screens on the coach had finally dried, so I spent a little time taking them down and putting the other outside stuff away. We are leaving here tomorrow and I wasn’t sure that there wasn’t going to be more rain before morning. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the coach, relaxing and watching TV.

Thursday, September 27th, we woke up again to partly cloudy skies. We didn’t get any rain overnight and I only heard one distant thunderstorm in the middle of the night. We packed up the coach and were on the road by 10:00, heading southwest to our next destination, Halstead, Kansas. Halstead, about 160 miles from Melvern Lake, is a small farming town of about 2,000 population. It is on U.S. 50, about 12 miles west of I-135, and is about 35 miles north of Wichita, Kansas. We made the journey without running into any rain, although the skies were overcast the whole time.

We arrived at the Spring Lake RV Resort, just outside Halstead, about 1:30 and got settled into our site. This is a Passport America park, so we got the site at half price, a full hookup, 50 amp site for $14 a night. Not the fanciest park in the world, but it is OK and inexpensive. It appears to be on the site of an old farm, there is still part of a silo near the entrance, and the sites are scattered around a series of cow ponds. The people are very friendly and chatted us up as soon as we walked in the office. Some other people pulled into the park right behind us and in talking to them we learned that there is a Kansas State Good Sam Rally next week in Hutchinson, Kansas, just a few miles down the road, a rally that we had not been aware of. Since our schedule for the next few weeks is very loose, we are going to consider attending the rally. We need one more rally. We got settled into our spot and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing and handling a few chores.

Friday, September 28th, we left the coach after lunch to do some exploring and geocaching in the area. Our first stop was the town of Halstead, which didn’t take too long. According to the folks at the RV park, the most interesting thing to see in Halstead is the Old Hardware Store. Back in 1885 a stone building was built on the main street and a hardware store

was established. Although the building has passed through many owners over the years it has always been operated as a hardware store and is thought to be the oldest, continuously operating hardware store in the country. The current owner has restored the building and now operates it as a museum and gift shop. It is on the National Historic Places list and there is a plaque in front of the store. Unfortunately for us, there was also a sign on the door that said it was closed this weekend.

We did a couple of caches in Halstead before moving a little further east to the much larger town of Newton, Kansas. Newton is a city of about 20,000 which was established in 1871 as a railhead between the Chisom Trail and the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railroad. The Chisom Trail was the route used by Texas cattle ranchers to drive their cattle north to Kansas where they were loaded onto trains for shipment north and east. Today the city is mostly an adjunct to Wichita, about 20 miles south. We explored the Newton downtown and cached, ending up with ten new finds for the day, along with two new DNFs. We quit caching just about the time the rain started again. No thunderstorms, but rain coming down so hard that at times it was difficult to see the road. After caching we went back to the RV park and relaxed the rest of the night. Fortunately, the rain stayed to the east and we didn’t get anything more than a couple of sprinkles at the RV park.

Saturday, September 29th, we left the coach about 11:00 for a day in Wichita. Wichita is another of the big, Midwest cities that we have never had the opportunity to visit. Wichita is the largest city in Kansas, with a population of over 630,000. The city was founded in 1870 as part of the westward expansion of the railroads and, like Newton to the north, became a “cowtown” as a result of it’s location on the Chisom Trail. In 1914 oil was discovered nearby and Wichita became a major oil center. The money derived from oil allowed local entrepreneurs to invest in the just emerging airplane industry. Over the years nearly every name in aviation was associated with Wichita. This included Cessna, Beech, Stearman, Travel Air, Curtis Wright, and Mooney. All of these companies started in Wichita, along with many other aviation related companies. The city earned the name, “Air Capital of America” and still holds that title. Today, Cessna LearJet (now Bombardier) and Beechcraft are still headquartered in Wichita and have their primary manufacturing facilities in the city, and both Boeing and European Airbus have manufacturing facilities and technology centers here. A look at a map shows a dozen airports surrounding the city, including McConnell Air Force Base.

The city experienced a population explosion during World War II when it became a major manufacturing center for the Boeing B-29 airplanes needed in the war effort. By 1945, an average of 4.2 bombers were being produced daily in Wichita. For many years Boeing was Wichita's largest employer. After WW-II Boeing made Wichita the headquarters for the Boeing Military Airplane Company and the plant produced all of the B-47 bombers, the nation’s first all-jet engine bomber. Many of the later B-52 bombers were also built in Wichita. The Boeing plant was adjacent to McConnell AFB and used the same runways. The two Boeing 747 aircraft that serve as Air Force One were brought to the Wichita Boeing plant in the late 1980's where the modifications were completed to turn them into the VC-25 aircraft that are used by the President.

Our first stop after getting into Wichita was to find some lunch. One of the tourist magazines we had picked up at the RV park had an advertisement for a place called Jimmies Diner which claimed to be a 50's style eating place. We weren’t too far away, so that’s where we headed. Turned out to be a great decision. Jimmies is in a very retro looking building, all shiny aluminum and curvy and the inside was very retro also. All the wait staff was dressed 50's style, pink and black, poodle skirts, the whole thing. The menu was also very 50's, hamburgers of course, but also meatloaf, liver and onions, and other comfort foods. Jackie and I both had cheeseburgers that were very close to the best we have ever had. They just had the taste that takes you back to the days of hand formed burgers. I had tater tots with mine that were great, along with a real strawberry milkshake. They brought the milkshake in an old fashioned glass and then left the metal shake container with the leftovers on the table, just like they did in the old days. It was a very fun lunch with very good food. Jimmies is on Rock Avenue, around 33rd street. I would highly recommend it if you are in Wichita and looking for a fun meal. They also do breakfast and dinner, by the way.

After lunch we drove into the center of town. While we were eating lunch we bought a local paper and learned that McConnell AFB was having their annual air show this weekend. We hoped to be able to see the Thunderbirds Air Team perform at 3:00. While we were driving down the freeway, only a few miles north of the base, we heard the roar of jet engines and an F-17 stealth fighter flew over and he only looked like he was a few hundred feet above the ground. Very loud and it scared the crap out of Jackie. We spent some time driving around downtown Wichita, which is situated on the east bank of the Arkansas River. We also did some geocaching near the center of town and several of the caches took us to interesting historical places. In the downtown area the City has placed dozens of bronze statues. Some are very small, birds and frogs, some are very large. One of the statues commemorates the lunch counter sit-ins of the early 60's I was able to actually sit at the counter. Very realistic.

We also did several of a series which took us to the site of very early aircraft manufacturers, companies that were created at the turn of the century, in the late teens, and early 20's. Of course, none of the original buildings still remained, but you could get a sense of how the area might have looked back then from the descriptions provided by the person who hid the caches. We ended up with eleven new finds and no DNFs. One of the caches we found was number 4,300, another milestone for us. Yea!

We had hoped to get out into the area of McConnell AFB, which is at the southeast edge of the city, by 3:00 but our caching and exploring took longer than we thought, so we missed the Thunderbirds. I did see one fly over the downtown area, but that was all. We finally started back towards the RV park about 4:30 after a very fun and interesting day in Wichita. After we got back to the coach we just relaxed and watched TV the rest of the evening.

Sunday, September 30th, we left the coach after lunch with the intention of doing a little geocaching and visiting an outlet mall that we had seen just off the freeway, on the southern edge of Newton. We had seen it the other day on our way down to Wichita. We got to the mall and to our disappointment found that most of the stores were empty. There was a multi-screen movie theater that seemed to be doing OK for business, but there were only a couple of retail stores still open, and none them interested us. Half the mall had been taken over by non-profits as office space. Oh well, no shopping today.

We decided we would spend a couple of hours geocaching instead, so off we went. We had already done all of the urban caches around Newton, so we were having to go out to do the more rural caches. This was fine except that it takes longer because the caches are miles apart rather than blocks. We ended up finding nine new caches in about three hours, along with one DNF. A couple of the caches were in cemeteries, they seem to like cemetery caches in the Midwest, so we got to see some pretty interesting tombstones. A lot of Civil War vets are buried around Kansas. Most of their graves are marked with bronze plaques. They are a small star with the dates 1861-1865 inside and the letters GAR. which stands for Grand Army of the Republic, on top of the star. GAR was the Union, I have not seen anything similar marking a Confederate grave, although I doubt there are many, if any, in this part of the country.

We also found one cute cache that was named “Don’t have a cow, Man” which is a phrase made famous by Bart Simpson in the animated Simpsons TV show. The cache was an ammo box and when you opened it there was a small plastic cow glued to the inside of the lid, along with a noise maker that made a “moo” sound when you opened the lid. Pretty funny. After our caching we drove back to the RV park and relaxed the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Monday, October 1st, our last full day at the Spring Lake Campground. Up until this morning the weather forecast for the rest of this week has been sunshine and warm temperatures. All of a sudden this morning its clouds, rain and cool temperatures. By noon we were getting rain sprinkles and black clouds. Rats. We did have to get at least one geocache today for our days of the year challenge, so after lunch we went out for a quick one or two close by caches. We went to the little town of Burrton, about five miles west of the campground, where I knew there were a couple of caches we had not looked for yet. Although it was raining lightly, we still went out and found two caches in the Burrton cemetery. Yea, we got the day marked off for our challenge. We also had one that we couldn’t find. We did a DNF for the cache, even though we didn’t give the search our full effort because of the rain and wind.

After caching we drove back to the town of Halstead so we could visit the Old Hardware Store. This time we found it to be open. We spent about a half hour wandering around in the store looking at the antique stuff. It is very unusual in that it truly is a working hardware store, but everything is in cases and on shelving that goes back to the turn of the century. There are tons of very old light fixtures, gas lamp fixtures, old cabinet hinges and pulls, everything you could think of that might be in a hardware store in 1920 or 1940. This would be a must visit place for anyone trying to restore a turn of the century home. After our tour of the Old Hardware Store we went back to the RV park and did one load of laundry at the park’s laundry facility. We just wanted to do enough to ensure that we wouldn’t have to worry about laundry while at the rally next week. Yes, we decided to do one more rally, so when we leave tomorrow we will only be going about 25 miles to Hutchinson, Kansas for a Good Sam Kansas Samboree. Should be fun.

After laundry we went back to the coach and sat and watched the rain. I managed to get the outside screens down before the evening rains started so I wouldn’t have to take them down in the morning if was still raining. Since we will be leaving here for another rally in the morning, this seems to be the ideal point to close this chapter of the blog and get it published. We’ll put up another episode in a couple of weeks. Until next time, remember that life is like a roller coaster, lots of ups and downs, twists and turns, laughs, screams and thrills. And, like a roller coaster, you only go around once, so enjoy the ride despite the dips. See ya soon.