The Events of Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Rain, rain, and more rain. Driving, driving, and more driving. We covered three states today. And we drove for eight hours. That’s a lot of driving, let me tell you.

We woke up very tired from our late night at the fair and had a breakfast with a special treat of cantaloupe. Then we got ready to go and drove off in what Iowans might call a light downpour.

We drove to a rest area for lunch in the Fort Collins area, and then we drove to a Costco in Omaha, Nebraska. This city’s name, we learned, derived from an American Indian word meaning “above all others on a stream”. In 1859, President Abraham Lincoln designated Omaha as the point from which our country’s first transcontinental railroad should go westward, but it wasn’t until December2, 1863 that ground was officially broken for construction of the Union Pacific. Then we drove on to Kansas, our destination for the night and the following day. On our way to Kansas, we traveled along the Lincoln Highway. This special travel way is a 3,389-mile, twelve-state continuous route from New York to California. Once its construction was complete, the association which built it sent Boy Scout troops across the country to place over three thousand mile markers along the route in all twelve states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California.

Kansas is—well, what can I say about a state in which it was once illegal to have any sort of ice cream on your cherry pie? Kansas is kwirky, with a ‘k’. How’s that?

While driving, we passed the Orphan Train Museum and a sunflower-decked store in which Wizard of Oz merchandise was sold. We also slept, catching up on some of our sleep from our late night at the Iowa State Fair, and read books. Mom played Wizard of Oz music to get us all in the mood for Kansas.

We arrived in time for dinner at our RV park in Hutchinson, Kansas (home to two of the eight wonders of Kansas), and had many laughs over dinner over things you folks probably wouldn’t think was funny, so I don’t feel like telling you. We finished dinner clean-up around 8:05 and got ready for bed, tired after doing basically nothing but driving for a whole day.