A few days in Lawrence with family and friends

We arrived in Lawrence, Kansas on schedule and parked the Airstream in the driveway of our friends, Rob and Nancy Marshall.

We plan to stay here for three nights and two days while Bill re-connects with sister Barbara and a few old friends.

Our first night here (Wednesday) we had a nice quiet dinner with Rob and Nancy. Later we watched the first game of the world series.

Thursday morning we accompanied the Marshalls as they ran errands around town and then took a little time to buy a few gifts for the McQueen kids. We don't want to show up in Kentucky empty handed!

Thursday evening Bill's sister Barbara, who lives in Lawrence, came over and the five of us had a nice dinner at a local Lawrence pub.

Friday morning Rob and Nancy's granddaughter Naomi, who is 3, came by to show us her Halloween costume - a very cute pink fairly outfit.

After Naomi and her mom left we took a drive out to Rob and Nancy's farm, which lies about 20 miles southwest of of Lawrence. It was a cold and windy afternoon but that didn't stop us from having a picnic lunch alongside their pond.

Rob and Nancy were kind enough to host a make-it-yourself pizza party for us. They invited Barbara and several of Bill's old friends from high school and college. Here's a picture of Nancy Marshall flipping a pizza up in the air.

We had a wonderful evening, it was great to see several folks that Bill hadn't seen in as much as 25 years, and our gratitude goes out to Rob and Nancy for being such gracious hosts.

Here's a group photo from our evening:

Top row: Bob and Barb McLaughlin, George Paley, Barbara Brackman, Rob Marshall, Mike Brewer, Bev Timmons
Bottom row: Judy Paley, Demi, Bill, Rick Gould
(Nancy Marshall took the picture)

Tomorrow morning (Saturday) we'll leave for Hopkinsville, Kentucky and a reunion with Kai and her family!

Day 8 - Not much happened

We continued heading towards our scheduled break in Lawrence, Kansas. Bill went to college in Lawrence at Kansas University and has a sister and several friends who still live there. If things go according to plan we should be there tomorrow.

Not much to report about today's drive. More boring South Dakota landscape then subtle, welcome, changes in terrain and vegetation as we headed south from Sioux Falls, SD to Sioux City, Iowa.

The wind was relentless today. Not a head wind but a cross wind. Made driving a little more stressful and reduced our gas mileage by a third. By the way, the Chevy diesel truck is getting an average of 16 mpg while towing the Airstream. We're pleasantly surprised as we had assumed that it would get 14 to 15 mpg. That may not sound like much of a difference but when you're on a 6,000 mile trip it will result in about $110 in fuel savings.

We spent the night in a KOA campground in Sioux City.

Day 7 - The South Dakota Badlands and boredom

We left Sundance, Wyoming and were soon in South Dakota. Took a side trip up Spearfish canyon and visited Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Very pretty place. Once again we were fighting snow.

After leaving Spearfish we drove about 50 miles east and did a loop through the South Dakota badlands. Interesting country that reminded us of the Painted Hills in Oregon - but on a much larger scale. Here's a picture of Bill freezing while standing on a Badlands overlook.

Leaving The Badlands we entered the South Dakota prairie. Here's our analysis:
Flat
Boring
Windy
Way too many billboards

One interesting thing in South Dakota: everywhere someone has died in an automobile accident they place a sign that says "X marks the spot, Why Die?, Think". On the back of the sign they list the name of the victim and the date. Very effective.

We spent the night in Murdo, South Dakota. Nothing to say there....

Day 6 - The Black Hills and some snow

We stopped in Sundance because Demi wanted to see Devil's Tower, the granite monolith immortalized in "Close Encounters of The Third Kind".

Unfortunately, we woke up to two inches of new snow and a very low ceiling. We made the one hour drive out to Devil's Tower National Monument anyway and were able to at least see the tower. We walked around, took in the visitor center, and called it a morning.

As we're both fighting a cold we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the trailer watching football and resting.

Kind of a boring day.

Here's a picture of Devil's Tower on a foggy morning

Day 5 - Thermopolis, Wyoming to Sundance, Wyoming

Not much happened today. A long drive through mostly open, uninteresting space. Saw lots and lots of antelope.

We stopped in Casper (the capitol of Wyoming, population 55,000) to look for an AC adapter for Demi's Ibook. No luck so Bill bought a new Gateway netbook instead. It seemed to make sense at the time.

The weather began to turn for the worse today. Intermittent showers and falling temperatures.

We're going to Sundance because it's close to Devil's Tower and the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota.

We're both fighting colds (probably picked up from Kate's boys) and are hoping that we'll be non-infectious before we reach Hopkinsville so that we don't transfer the colds to Kai's girls. Although, when you think about it, there's a certain symmetry to that scenario.

Day 4 - Moran, WY to Thermopolis, WY

We left the high country around Yellowstone and headed "down the hill" to the east side of the continental divide. We're headed for Thermopolis, Wyoming.

This drive required us to cross a 9,600 foot high pass - 1,400 feet higher than the pass that had given us brake problems a couple of days earlier. But it turns out that today's pass had 7% grades on each side of the crest rather than the 10% grades that had given us trouble. The truck and airstream handled it with aplomb.

Thermopolis claims to be the home of "the world's largest hot spring". It's situated in a state park. There's a state run free bath house there . It's free because the terms of the sale of the spring (native americans selling to the state of Wyoming) call for perpetual free use. It's free as long as you don't want to sit in the water for longer than 20 minutes.

Day 3 - In and around Yellowstone

Neither of us had ever been to Yellowstone before so, naturally, it was high on our list of "must sees". We left the trailer in Moran and spent the day driving around Yellowstone. News flash - it's very, very big.

This late in the year it wasn't at all crowded - in fact the vast majority of the visitor facilities were closed for the winter. We didn't bring much food with us so we were starving by late afternoon until we found a "general store" that was open and had chili (and brownies) available. Sweet!

Being a geology nut and a little obsessive about hot springs, Demi loved Yellowstone. Our timing was great at "Old Faithful" as it erupted within 5 minutes of our arrival.

We didn't see any bears or wolves, but we did score a couple of moose, lots of elk and bison, and a river otter.

Here are a few of the many, many pictures we took with descriptions of each photo: The Grand Tetons, Vents at the edge of Yellowstone Lake, thermophiles (micro-organisms that live in the hot, chemically active water), Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and a moose.

Day 2 - Mountain Home, Idaho to Moran, Wyoming

We left Bruneau Dunes State Park (picture on left) early on Wednesday morning headed for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming. After looking at the map we decided that we should take US 20 which runs roughly parallel to and north of I-84 through southern Idaho. This way we could stop at Craters of the Moon National Monument where Demi could at least partially satisfy her obsession with lava flows.

US 20 took us to Idaho Falls where we navigated to some state routes that took us over a mountain range and down into Jackson, Wyoming. The road up to the pass (at 8,200 feet) and then the road down the other side into Jackson was a 10% grade. The truck and trailer made it fine but, because I didn't have the electric brakes on the trailer adjusted correctly, we "smoked" the trailer brakes on the way down. For I while I thought they were going to catch on fire but, in the end, everything worked out.

Here's a picture of Demi taken at the top of the pass with Jackson, Wyoming visible below her, and another one of an arch made out of deer antlers in a city park in Jackson.

Late in the afternoon we arrived at an RV park in Moran which we used as a base to explore Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

Day 1 On The Road

Well, we left on schedule this morning and everything has gone well so far. As I mentioned, we decided to change our route over the first few days so that we could go through Yellowstone National Park.

As a result, tonight we're staying about 20 miles south of Mountain Home, Idaho at Bruneau Dunes State Park. It's a pretty nice place and there are only three RV's in the campground so it's pretty darn quiet. There's free wireless internet and our TV was able to locate 11 over the air channels. Pretty sweet.

Tomorrow it's off to Yellowstone.

Here are pictures of wind turbines along the Columbia River, Demi driving the truck, and one of the lakes at Bruneau Dunes State Park.

We're still on schedule

Chris Weaver and the boys just left after spending 48 hours in Tygh Valley. Demi's on her way back here from a 4 day vacation with friends at the Oregon coast. We're both gonna be tired but we're still planning to leave Tygh Valley on Tuesday morning for the KY trip.

We've already decided to make a change in our route (the map doesn't reflect this). We'd like to go through Yellowstone (weather permitting) so we've decided to take I-84 to Boise and then east through Idaho on US 20 to the west Yellowstone entrance. We'll rejoin I90 somewhere in Wyoming.

Hobbies

I always said that when I retired I'd rediscover my love for woodworking. Over the past year I've accumulated a nice shop full of tools from Craigslist. I haven't made too many projects yet, but last winter I did craft some wooden toys out of building materials left over from our house construction. So far, I've made a dump truck, a forklift, two helicopters, and a child's pull-toy grasshopper.

The dump truck was beautiful but too fragile for the grandkids to play with. When Kate asked if I'd consider donating it to Luke's school auction I agreed. Bye, bye truck








The forklift works - you can lift and lower the forks using the hand-crank and the string. The pallets are crafted out of cherry wood. It's so cute that we decided to keep it.


I made two helicopters - mostly out of plywood - and gave them to the Weaver boys. I think they're still functional.


Lastly, I made a cute pull-toy grasshopper for Kai's daughter, Mary. Unfortunately, because I hand made each and every piece including the wheels, axles, and pivot pins, the toy doesn't work well unless you put a lot of extra weight on the body. The small mis-alignments of the various parts and pieces resulted in too much rolling resistance. It's still darling.


The dump truck and forklift are about 12 inches long. The helicopters are about 7 inches long, and the grasshopper body is about 9 inches long. Except for the helicopters, they're all built of walnut (our staircase), clear fir (our house interior trim), beech (our cabinets), cherry, and oak.

Our planned route

Here's a map of our anticipated route. We're taking the northern route to get there and the southern route to return. We plan to spend a few days with friends and family in Lawrence, Kansas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. We'll also be visiting Yellowstone (weather permitting), Mt. Rushmore, The Black Hills, Graceland, Sedona, Death Valley, and assorted hot springs.

Road Trip!

We leave next week (the 20th or 21st) for a 6 week road trip to Kentucky to spend time with Kai, her husband Chris, and their three daughters Mary, Anna, and Olivia.

We're taking our truck and Airstream trailer and - with luck - we'll be posting some pictures and keeping a diary of our trip.

Check back to see where we've been and what we've seen.