granddaughter coraline

granddaughter coraline

grandson mason

grandson mason

grandson jaxson

grandson jaxson

Saturday, July 14, 2007

13JUL07 - Garden City, KS


Today being Friday the 13th we of course ran into some bad luck. Nothing serious like broken RV or accident; just minor things that made the drive frustrating and the time on the road way too long. First thing was Navigator (or more correctly, the Naviguessor) estimating it was 300 miles to get into Nebraska. Wrong! After 200 miles we hadn’t even gotten out of the pan handle of Texas. Seems the Naviguessor had mis-read the scale on the map! In Dan’s defense, we must remember he was an engineer on board the Coast Guard Cutter MUNRO, not a deck watch officer.

The start of the drive began with gray, overcast skies, that soon turned into thunder, lightning, and driving rain. Most of the morning was spent battling the elements. In addition, we ran into our first major road construction, thankfully not at the same time as the rain. We were trapped on narrow strip of resurfaced road with no shoulder on either side. When you are driving 8-1/2 feet of RV on a nine foot lane, the pucker factor definitely goes up!

After we discovered our distance miscalculation, it was decided to drive a little longer than normal to finish over 300 miles in Garden City, KS. As usual we checked the RV books to find a RV park that sounded in good shape and reasonably priced. As we approached the park, Dan said this looks very familiar, and than said - we stayed here three years ago on our retirement RV trip! The RV park wasn’t in the best of shape three years ago, and had gone down hill some. But being worn out, hot, and with slightly frazzled tempers, we checked in, and hit the pool to relax.

By the way, we knew we were in Kansas home of the Wizard of Oz, because the sign at the border says KANSAS OZ-SOME (get it?), and the RV park had streets named after Oz characters (Scarecrow Drive, Auntie Em Street, etc). When we checked in they told us we were lucky that we hadn’t been there yesterday, because the wind and rain were extremely high and heavy causing many problems for RV’ers. Dan wanted to ask - if any mean ass school marms had been seen peddling a bike in the storm screeching --- I will get you my pretty? But figured they might not appreciate his sense of humor.

US 83 Trivia: 1) What is the school mascot for Hamlin, TX (think Crispian St Peter’s hit single from the 60s)? 2) Where is the world’s largest, free, community pool located? 3) Where did Frank Baum get the name Oz (think filing cabinet)?

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