July 1, 2009

July 1, 2009



We left the Fairfield Inn State Park just north of OK City after breakfast at around 8 a.m. For some reason, this campground had snowy white towels and sheets—we’ll have to suggest that more campgrounds provide such luxuries.

We headed north to Wichita on I-35 and then west on US 50. We drove for many miles and saw practically nothing except landscape—it was like that almost all day. OK did have rolling hills. It was very green and hot there. When we reached Kansas, it became flat. The fields smelled really good. We saw a small old cemetery in the midst of a huge green field upon which there were green and yellow wildflowers growing in abundance. Black cows were herded together here and there. We saw town names, such as Yoder and Plevna.

We later saw countless fields of corn. There were giant sprinklers on wheels, inching their way across the fields. Combines with their shiny metal blades were spitting out “stuff” all over the ground. For a while I thought I smelled popcorn—David didn’t, but then again, he never smells anything. Later we both smelled something yeasty, as if there were a huge bread factory around, but we didn’t see one.

It’s clearly a very conservative area of the country. There are many signs that look somewhat homemade that are against abortion. There are may hand-drawn pictures of babies that say, “Save The Babies”.

We stopped for lunch at Strate’s Kountry Kitchen in Kinsley, KS. You don’t get to choose where you’ll eat lunch. If you want to eat at a restaurant, you stop when you see one. Otherwise, you might not see one again for a long while. The same goes for gas. We’ve been filling up every chance we get—just in case. By the way, I saw some salad dressing I’d never heard of before—Dorothy Lynch Dressing. I had to try it, of course. It was OK—kind of a French Dressing with poppy seeds.

After leaving Kimsley, you really don’t see much. There are very few trees and miles of nothingness. When we entered Colorado, it really looked pretty ugly—not the Colorado we knew and loved. We knew our campground was not too far away, so we stopped at our new favorite store—Walmart—to get food for dinner. We’ve been to Walmart more often on our 6 days on the road than we’d ever been to Walmart previously. The Walmart was across the street from