The trip to Kansas - part 1 of a saga

Oh my goodness, what a trip! My gut feelings of dread that surfaced a day before the trip were well-founded.

Beware of American Airlines.

The pilots on your first flight will give you the wrong gate numbers for the second flight. Ignore them and check the departing flights screens for yourself. This happened to us both directions. The trip back, we were aware and checked for ourselves.

They're often late due to broken planes.

They're chronically short of flight crews and have to cancel flights.

Our trip to Kansas took over 14 actual hours (figuring in all the time zone changes). This wasn't totally American Airlines' fault. We flew into DFW on time and they warned that weather delays lay ahead. It was a rough landing because the cross wind gusts were quite strong.

Gate #1
We came in at D terminal and were told our gate to leave was at the opposite end of the C terminal. We used the transport system to go two stops and parked ourselves at the gate. There was about an hour to wait so we didn't worry about a different destination on the board behind the desk. When they didn't leave and our departure time was nearly there, we checked the departure screens to find out our gate was really the opposite end of C.

Gate #2
We sprinted through the terminal, up to the transport and sprinted from the transport to our gate only to find it was delayed and had changed back to the other half of the terminal.

Gate #3
We walked back to the other half of the terminal, checking the shops along the way to our third gate and sat where we could watch the storm cells approach. A few minutes went by and they announced our gate had changed AGAIN and we had to go back to the other half of the terminal.

Gate #4
By this time they'd closed the transport system due to severe storms so we walked back. There was a plane waiting at the gate to go to NYC, so we had a mix of passengers for both flights waiting. Outside, the weather had turned to lightning and thunder. The skies were filled with black clouds, each pouring rain like a shower head. The storm raged. Lightning strikes happened all around us and on top of us. We thought we saw a strike out by the runway behind the waiting plane but it turned out we saw that plane being struck!

It was amazing to see just how much water poured out of the skies. Sometimes the rain was so heavy we couldn't see the runways. The drain from the top of the building gushed water onto the tarmac like a firehose. The few transport vehicles still moving left wakes behind each tire. Then there was no activity at all aside from the rain cells dumping water amid flashes of lightning and booms of thunder. People were waiting out the storm.

The yellow blinky light on top of the plane had stopped blinking. They sent the NYC people away saying their flight was canceled. We waited. Crews were working on the plane for a long time. Baggage crews removed the baggage. They announced that there were problems moving the plane away to make room for ours and that they hoped they'd soon be able to move it. Our time to leave changed from 4:30 to 5:15 to 5:55 to 6:15 to 6:30 and on and on. We called Dad M's house and told Helen not to cook for us because we had no idea when we'd finally get in. Then we went to TGI Fridays and had dinner. A man at the next table was also heading to Wichita and we struck up a conversation. He worked in airline construction so he knew what was up with the damaged plane. Apparently the brakes are locked unless electrical system is working properly.

When we finished our meals it was 7:30 or so. The plane still wasn't fixed. Eric and I played "Who's the spy?" because you know at any airport there are federal intelligence agents around. This amused people near us. One guy I suspected as a spy came and sat down next to me and started to chat. lol

Finally the yellow blinky light on top of the lightning-struck plane started working again and soon they moved it away and got our plane in place. We boarded. The crew was cranky. The passengers were cranky. There was a loud high-pitched whine that bored into my skull and drove me nuts. Sure, I've heard it before but it always stopped after a short time and wasn't usually this loud. We asked a very cranky flight attendant when it would stop. She said when we pushed off from the gate. Hadn't we flown before? They waited at the gate for 45 minutes to gather other passengers from delayed landings. This time the sound didn't stop when we finally pushed off at 9:30. Then we sat on the runway approach for another hour with that horrible sound going non-stop. I tried plugging my ears. It cut right through. I finally realized I had to meditate to keep from completely losing it. They had no explanation why we just sat there for an entire hour. I was so grateful when we did finally take off. That horrid sound finally stopped once we were in the air.

We landed in Wichita at 11:30. I was worried about the car rental we'd arranged. Some of the car rental desks were dark. Thankfully, ours was still open and we got a very cute little compact. Eric had brought his tablet PC with the DeLorme Street Atlas program and the USB GPS. He drove since he thought he knew where Dad's house was. I hadn't driven there since they moved. I navigated with that cool little program. It took us directly there. :)

We parked in the driveway and found the door unlocked. They were sound asleep so we quietly found our room and went to bed, exhausted. It was 1AM.

Kansas trip - Part 2 : 4th of July

Eric's dad woke us up at 7AM by ringing a cowbell outside our door and yelling something about time to get up and eat breakfast. I finally yelled at him to stop it in my grumpy bear voice. He thought it was funny. I hid the cowbells later.

On the table were sweetrolls and two types of kid cereal with all the sugar. I'm not eating sugary things anymore and had to explain that I'm trying to turn my blood sugar problems around before they turn into diabetes. I asked if they had any oatmeal and they did! I had oatmeal for breakfast every morning at the house.

Eric's dad committed us to attending a 4th of July family reunion of Eric's mom's family. Eric has always hated family reunions, expecially this one. We thought we were safe visiting since Eric's mom is gone and his dad remarried but to our surprise and Eric's dismay, they've all happily accepted Helen as one of the family.

We stopped on the way to buy some fireworks! Woot! My goodness there are so many I'd never seen before. Most of them shoot up into the air or just blow up. They had whole assortments of bombs to launch. There were various types of firecrackers, something that has never been legal in my lifetime in California.

At the reunion, Eric was worried some of his more "backwoods" relatives would be there but they weren't. We were thoroughly hugged by his aunts. The weather was hot and sticky. They'd reserved an air-conditioned building for the reunion proper though plenty of people were outside. The kids were all swimming in the lake or fishing there.

We sat down to eat across from Uncle Joe who grabbed my iced tea and battled with me for it, spilling it all over the table and floor. I mopped most of it up and refilled my cup. Luckily, he caught the blame for it. lol

They have an auction of stuff people bring to pay for the building. We kept getting pressured to bid on stuff we didn't want or need, especially considering we had to fly home so we slipped outside to go for a walk. I got a bunch of nature shots of flowers, a dragonfly and the approaching thunderstorm cells. Most of my pictures of people didn't come out clear. When we got back, the kids were back from swimming.

After the auction we overheard some people glancing at us and saying "..and they rented a car!" as if we were being all hoity-toity or something. Whatever. If renting the cheapest car we could get is hoity-toity then that's their problem. It's all in your point-of-view.

The auction ended about the time the skies started to open. People packed up and took off to try to beat the rain. It was my turn to drive. We stopped at the store to pick up a few things and the storm caught up with us. Walking back out to the car soaked us. We'd seen cheap spring water by the flat on the way to the reunion and I wanted soy milk for my oatmeal. We also picked up a carton of diet pepsi and a six-pack of flavored fizzy water. Dad and Helen didn't have any of our usual drinks.

I was proud of myself for managing to drive safely through the heaviest rain I'd ever seen. We passed a car with Kansas plates that pulled over to wait.

Boy did we get razzed about the bottled water. An orange cat was on the porch when we got back to the house. Dad said it was Helen's cat. She says it's Dad's cat. Helen feeds it leftovers now and then.

The rain was non-stop into the night. Nature provided all the fireworks we needed. We tried to sleep another night on that hard old double bed. It's so much smaller than our California king!

	Eric's dad and his bride
	Dad and Helen's cat.
	Fireworks that shoot into the sky! We never had those here in California, at least not for the regular people to shoot off.
	Pretty yellow flowers that were everywhere.
	purple wildflower at the lake.
	Here comes a storm cloud. See the rain?
	This park is a lovely place for family gatherings.
	Cool dragonfly at the lake
	Another storm cell approaches
	'My parents said I could be anything, so I became an asshole' His parents thought it was funny to put this shirt on him after swimming.

Kansas trip - Part 3 : Shopping in Yoder

We'd laid down the law with Eric's Dad about waking us up every morning. We were on vacation and expected to CATCH UP on rest, not get awakened earlier than we do when we're not on vacation. So he let us sleep. Sillies, they didn't eat when they wanted to. They waited for us to drag our sleepy butts out of bed. Over breakfast, that got straightened out for the future mornings. We discussed ideas for what to do during the day. Top of my list was a promise to bring J a hand-crafted Amish something, so we traveled over to Yoder. The hardware store was closed. We went into a gift store but they only had girly things, religious things or extremely expensive things. The lady running the store suggested we check the furniture store across the highway. We went over there. I searched the store to find the right thing. The tough part was most of the affordable things had religious verses on them and I know how that would go over with J. I did find something. Oddly, it looked like something his mother would buy.

Dad had given a box full of antiques to a dealer down the street who still hadn't paid him for it so we headed down there to see if satisfaction could be found. Eric and I found several things we remembered from our childhoods. Are we really that old?

After getting bored with all that, Eric went outside. I followed a few minutes later to see he'd made a new friend of the shop owner's cat. :)

We had dinner somewhere or other then went to the ball field to watch the town's firework display. They spent a lot of money on explosives. There wasn't any design to what they did that we could see. They were shooting them off for about an hour. I got bored and watched the fireflies in the creek below us sometimes. The funniest part were some three stage rockets that whistled as they shot out over us. They sounded so sad at the end.

Then we went back to the house and I shot off my fireworks. Whee! What fun! Even in my little assortment there were quite a few that shot off little rockets.

I stayed up talking to Helen until pretty late. Dad went to bed and Eric went to bed to read. She's such a dear! :)

It was still hard to sleep on that little bed.

	antique store cat enjoys some attention in Yoder, KS
	Fireworks on the 5th of July. Nature's fireworks took care of the 4th.

Kansas trip - Part 4: The salt mine museum

On the way to Yoder the previous day, we'd passed a sign to the Underground Salt Museum. Hey! That sounded interesting and cool on this hot sticky day. Friday Dad went to work and we slept in. We fixed our own breakfasts and I washed our dishes. Eric started looking through some antique books his dad found for him to go through until we both felt awake and ready to go. Helen didn't want to go so we set off for Yoder by ourselves to pick another something up for J's brother (I was feeling guilty for not doing my usual "evensies" the previous day) and after we'd shopped we were hungry for lunch.

The place we ate years ago was so packed there wasn't even an open parking place so we decided to check out a small cafe on the main street of Yoder. It was called the Bullseye Grill. We walked in and found a fairly large group of young Amish couples with preschool-aged children just getting their food. The kids were so quiet and well-behaved! One little girl stared at me so I smiled at her. She smiled back. :)

Eric was delighted to see he could get a cheeseburger with jalapeno peppers. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. While we were waiting to pay there was a lot of movement with the Amish group getting drinks and picking up their orders. We had to keep moving around to let them get past. Eric stepped around the corner and ended up blocking the soda machine. I think they need more room in there!

The food was good and on the way out a reporter stopped us to get our opinions. She was very interested that we were from California and that Eric had grown up nearby. She said she was writing for the Hutchinson newspaper.

We went off to the Underground Salt Museum. It was a bit pricey but there is very little in that part of Kansas we haven't done so we went for it. The museum only opened a few months ago. They've been mining salt for roads, ice cream production and livestock for a long time. The museum is in the older part of the mine. There used to be a vast inland sea that covered all of the plains on down to New Mexico. It evaporated and reformed over time creating layers of salt separated by basalt and sometimes with a red bitter mineral I can't remember the name of. They've dug out miles of salt leaving regular square pillars to keep the roof from caving in. You take the double-decker mining elevator down 600+ feet and ride a tram that winds around the pillars. They have a pile of excavated salt in one area for people to "mine" enough salt to fit in a little burlap bag. It's fun! The pure salt is clear but they tell you not to taste it. It's not the right quality for human consumption.

They've stored all kinds of records down there. The lack of humidity and the constant cool temperature is perfect for storage. The movie companies store their original film down there. If you have stuff that needs that kind of protection, you can pay them to store it.

The elevator is posted that during mine shift-change, visitors have to wait for the workers to come and go. This is still a working mine.

At the end of the tour you get to wander through staged areas showing the process of mining salt. By the elevator there's a huge pure salt block they found. There's a detailed explanation of how that happens on the tour. A little trough of finer salt crystals is in the waiting area. Eric and I dug through and found some really pretty pieces to add to our bags. I took my big crystal formation out of my bag to make room for little ones. Before the elevator came I saw an elderly lady take one of the clear ones and pop it into her mouth. That was too much for me and I copied her. When we got back up to the surface I was salted out and deposited the remains of the crystal in the trash. Then I gave Eric a big salty kiss! teehee!

Where my camera breaks and Eric eats frog legs
We ended out the day trying to find another battery for my camera and something bad happened. A metal thing popped out into the battery compartment that needed to be flush with the sides to let the battery slide in. Gentle attempts to push it out of the way didn't work. My new camera was now dead. We didn't have much time to mess with it because Eric's dad had made arrangements for us to have dinner with more relatives at a restaurant called China Star. I wasn't impressed. The hot and sour soup wasn't hot or sour. At least they had pepper sauce on the table. It was hot after that.

Eric's dad loves frog legs and this place had them. Eric ate some. I didn't look. Poor froggies!

We went to the relative's house outside of town. His neighbor had a very tall crop of weed growing in his yard. I wished my camera were working! Eric gave him a bad time about it even though he knows they used to raise hemp in Kansas before it became "reefer" and now it grows wild. It's not a problem with law enforcement as long as you don't harvest the stuff. As Eric remembers from his youth, it took a lot just to get a mild buzz with "Kansas creeper". There's not much interest in harvesting the stuff.

I was inside during all of that. The mosquitoes seem to love me and I seem to be slightly allergic to their bites.

The wife half of the couple let me use her computer to research my camera problem. There was nothing on their website about it.

Recording bugs and frogs
On the way home we decided to take the long way and try to record the Kansas night bugs and hopefully some frogs for our bedtime environment sounds collection. His dad suggested a couple of ponds to try. We headed on down some dirt roads. We got bugs all right but the only frogs we found at the ponds seemed to be shrieking instead of croaking. I joked that they were screaming, "MY LEGS! MY LEGS!"

We were heading out with our windows slightly down despite the darned mosquitoes and when we were far from the pond we suddenly heard perfect froggies! I pulled over as far as I dared and we hung the microphone out the window. Unfortunately, this road wasn't as quiet as we wanted. A truck went by on the cross road. Soon another truck went past us, stopped at a rise in the road and turned around to come back. He stopped next to us. I rolled my window down. He wanted to know if we needed help. His face looked more like he wanted to know what we were up to. Our rental did have Nevada license plates. We explained we were trying to record the frogs to go to sleep to. He didn't seem convinced. I explained Eric had grown up nearby and missed the night sounds of Kansas now that he lived in the city in California. He held up the tablet PC so the man could see the wave form. I pointed to the croak blobs and said, "You've got perfect frogs here, see?"

The guy seemed to believe us. Hey, he's got a great story to tell of a couple of crazy Californians driving a Nevada car and recording frogs and bugs, right? He was courteous and took the long way around to get where he was going instead of driving past a third time.

We got enough to make a pretty nice sound loop. :)

Then it was back to sleep in that hard little bed. I was starting to get used to sleeping up next to Eric.

Eric and me in the salt mine museum.

( More pictures under here )

Kansas trip - Part 5 Sis, computers and our escape!

We had been concerned about Sunday. We aren't church-goers. My beliefs don't fit traditional Christianity and Eric's have strayed far from his Baptist upbringing. Dad is helping build the new church in Moundridge for the Christian Fellowship. He began attending that church with Helen back when they were just friends. He said he was looking forward to showing off his work to us but there wasn't any movement toward that during the week. We decided the best thing to do was to leave on Saturday for a trip down to Liberal, KS in the southwestern corner of the state. The largest air museum in Kansas is in Liberal. They also have the official Dorothy's house and an Oz experience that I wanted to see.

Geneva (Sis) had the weekend off from work so we planned to go see her on Saturday. Dad and Helen wanted to go too, so they took their own car. Eric took a digital camera for Sis's birthday present. It turns out her computer is dead so she has no way to get the photos out of it. She had a little screwdriver she loaned Eric and he managed to pop the little metal thingy back into place so my battery would slide in. It worked! YAY! He tested it by snapping a picture of her.

We had pizza at the convenience store where Sis works. She's been promoted to management now. Go Sis! It was good pizza!

Her former mother-in-law, Phyllis, has the computer Eric's mom had. The family decided Sis should have it because she had the greatest need but she had a computer she liked so the computer and printer went to her mother-in-law at the time. They're still close. Phyllis just got a new computer so the old computer can go to Sis. The trouble is, it's got something wrong with it and it won't stay up for more than a few minutes. Phyllis wants her photos off of the old one. I spent the afternoon trying to figure out what was wrong with the old one at least to get the photos off, but failed. Eric and I both agree it's probably something with the power supply. Phyllis asked us to take the hard disk home with us and get the pictures off of it that way. We agreed. Then she had a few things that were problems with her new machine. It's Vista and very different from XP. Still, I got her fonts all larger so she could read and write email and websites, helped her install some software and helped her purchase McAfee since her trial had run out. She was thrilled. :)

Phyllis had a little dachshund who came to love us. Eric said he could live with a dog like that little girl. She's cat-sized and doesn't bark much.

Dad and Helen took a nap while I worked on Phyllis's computers then they headed for home after they woke up. We finally left about 7:30pm to drive to Liberal, Phyllis's hard drive well-packed in a little box. It was Eric's turn to drive and mine to navigate.

We saw windmill farms against the sunset as we approached Dodge City but the pictures weren't clear. It was close to 11PM when we arrived in Liberal. We checked into Motel 8 because we seemed to remember they were OK the last time we stayed in one. This one wasn't OK. I asked about the cleaners they use and the clerk said they only use pine cleaner when they run out of the other. That should have been a clue. Eric looked so tired I just couldn't make him get back in the car since we had no clue about the other motels in the area. Luckily, our room wasn't as bad as the hallways (which reeked) and my extra allergy med worked to keep me breathing.

A king-sized bed! Still harder than our own bed but no hanging off the edges or turning in unison! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Eric's sister Geneva

Kansas trip - Part 6 : Air Museum, Dorothy's House and museum

For all the stench of the hallways at Motel 8, they did have a good breakfast. They called it "continental breakfast" but it was unlike any I'd seen. I woke up before Eric and found out I could make him a Belgian waffle. The iron was heated up and had a built-in timer with pre-measured batter in little paper cups. They even had his favorite peanut butter and jelly there to dress it with! For me, they had the instant oatmeal packets that have a bit of sugar. Oh well. It's just one morning. I started his waffle and fixed my oatmeal. I got some coffee for me and juice for him, fixed the finished waffle and took it to our room. He awoke to breakfast in bed. :)

We got out of there a little after 10am. I checked out the brochures and discovered the Air Museum didn't open until 1PM on Sundays. They didn't have a brochure for Dorothy's house so I checked that out on the computer they had for guests in the lobby. It didn't open until 1PM either but my extra med was about to wear off and I wanted out of there. We cruised the town and discovered everything was closed except for Walmart. I wanted to find gold and silver covered sugar balls (cake decorations) to bring back anyway so we decided to go in. As I was getting out he said something and I paused. The car door tried to shut on my foot. YOW! It hurt a lot but didn't seem to be broken.

We wandered the aisles for a while. I was looking for one of those instant cold packs and maybe some sports wrap for my foot. No luck. The only instant cold packs they had was for use in knee braces and the only sports wrap was Ace brand. I know that's too thick and will give me blisters. Eric found a sale bin of DVD's and found more Stephen King movies than he'd even known about for $5 each. He found them all, considered that he'd have to get them to California somehow and put them all back. I didn't find metallic cake decorations. The clerk said they didn't carry them. Since I knew we'd be doing a lot of walking during the day I wanted to get off my foot so we decided to go to lunch before the museums opened. We found a Mexican restaurant that looked good and it was. Eric had enchiladas and I had a ribeye steak with rice and beans.

Then it was off to the museums. I took lots and lots of pictures. Only a few are here. I have no idea what most of the planes were. Eric does. He was surprised there were so many private planes. The docent told us the hangar was haunted by the ghost of the biggest donor of planes. If we saw him we were to greet him by the name Colonel Tom. I asked the docent if he was going to hang around the museum when his time came and he said, "If the good Lord is willing!" :)

The museum is on the grounds of the WWII training grounds for flight crews. It's very likely our former neighbor trained there.

When we'd seen all there was to see we still had plenty of time for Dorothy's house so we went there next. I misplaced the discount card the airline museum gave us for that. We could have saved two whole dollars!

"Dorothy" herself took us on a guided tour of her house and Oz. The house was a typical historic home with authentic things from the early 1900's. We saw a lot of stuff we'd inherited from our grandmothers. Dorothy told us first-person how she and Auntie Em did this and that.

Oz was fun. They mixed the story up a bit and the models were hit and miss in quality but it was a lot of work to do what they'd done. Our "Dorothy" was of Mexican-American heritage and didn't look much like the Dorothy dolls in the exhibits but it's a summer job for teens, ya know? She recited her script and was only thrown a little when I did some of the voices. The one picture I took of her came out really blurry, darn it.

After the guided tour, we went through the local museum displays. They had a room dedicated to Greensburg and other tornados that had touched local lives. In the next room there was a buffalo head that Eric thought he took a picture of me with. I did take a picture of him pretending to pick the critter's nose. lol

They didn't have t-shirts we liked in our sizes. No place seemed to. They all claimed their orders were backordered. There seems to be a shortage of XL and XXL t-shirts.

Everything in Liberal closes at 5PM on Sundays. We checked out a hotel with external room doors that also had an outdoor pool. They didn't advertise HBO. They didn't have it. They did however, have rooms I wasn't allergic to. Fine with us. We were exhausted. Our dinner was snack food. I was getting caught up in a Stephen King book while Eric crashed. We slept and slept. It rained that night with lightning and thunder.

	I pretend to start the prop at the Air museum in Liberal, KS
	Eric taking pictures with his cell phone.
	This plane looked so happy!
	A lineup of big old war planes on the tarmac.
	Munchkin Land in 'Oz' in Liberal, KS
	Follow the yellow brick road!
	Actual model of Dorothy's house used in the movie's tornado scene
	The yellow bricks outside of Dorothy's house are all donated, some by famous people.
	Eric picks the buffalo's nose. This was in the local history museum next to Dorothy's house.

Kansas trip - Part 7 : The trip from Liberal to Moundridge

I woke up regretting the snack food dinner. My tummy wasn't happy at all. The free coffee provided in the room probably didn't help my tummy much but it woke my head up. I needed to be awake. It was my turn to drive. We went in search of breakfast. The pancake house was closed. The best we could do was Sonic. They did have breakfast food but my stomach churned at the thought of anything with eggs or bacon. Blech. I ended up having a grilled chicken sandwich. Eric had a jalapeno cheeseburger. Wow! He's so happy Kansas is getting with the Mexican food thing. I felt better after eating real food and we hit the road.

Luckily my foot was doing OK. It had a bruise but no swelling. Also luckily, it was my left foot and not the one I needed to drive the car.

I can't drive for extended periods without irritating my neck so we took breaks every hour or so. Sometimes it was to take photos of flowers or scenery. Sometimes it was just long enough to find a bathroom. Sometimes it was to browse through a Dollar General store (Eric's thing).

Boot Hill, Dodge City, KS
I was ready for a longer break when we got to Dodge City. Eric had poo-pooed the idea of going to Boot Hill and the O.K. Corral but once we got there he left it up to me whether to go in or not. I didn't see anything about the O.K. corral. I guess it's in a different part of town but Boot Hill is a big tourist trap. We poked around the gift shop and used the bathrooms. It was hot and sticky. A nice cold sarsaparilla sure would taste good, I thought. But the only way to get one was to pay the price and go to the saloon. Eric was tempted by that thought, too. We went in. Most of the bodies were moved from Boot Hill. The places they were are marked. The stories are told of how they died. The original jail is between the stairs and the history museum that separates the cemetary from the rest of the tourist trap. Down hill from there is an old replica street, all the shops air-conditioned and most of them attached to an interior hallway. We explored the buildings, looked at the first floor displays in an old authentic house that is too weak to allow people upstairs anymore and went back to the saloon for our sarsaparillas. Ah, they tasted good! I kept my bottle as a souvenir.

The bartender chatted us up and asked about the weather where we're from. He says he's getting very worried about the weird weather everyone says they're having this year no matter where they're from. We agreed global warming is a serious thing that needs to be addressed right now.

In the gift shop, I picked up a magnet for our refrigerator and a woven wheat decoration for Helen and Dad. It was two entwined hearts with a golden ribbon and flowers. We missed their anniversary last month. Better late than never! We'd picked out an anniversary card for them at Walmart in Liberal so now we were set.

We headed on down the road. I was hoping to get back to Moundridge by dinner time but that just didn't happen. We called Helen to let her know then stopped at Geneva's convenience store to have another of those wonderful pizzas. We called Sis as soon as we decided to do that and she met us there. Another relative dropped in and chatted with us for a while. Before we all left he said the nicest thing, that it was nice to know there were some down-to-earth people like us in California. lol

Eric wanted me to detour through Windom where his dad grew up. He wanted to see if his grandmother's house was still there. The house was surrounded by a thick band of trees so he wasn't sure it was the same house. His dad confirmed later that it was. It was out on a muddy road about a block away that we saw the pretty weeds I snapped photos of. Eric pointed out where Uncle Dwight used to live and where a pond used to be. It was a pretty little town even though the few shops that used to be there had been out of business for a long time. The buildings look like they're about to fall down.

Eric appears in the newspaper
We got back to Moundridge about 8PM, too late for us to go meet Helen's kids. We'll just have to go back! Helen's sister gave her a copy of the Hutchinson newspaper. The article about the Bullseye Grill featured Eric as the lead part of the story! Kansas boy moves to California and develops a taste for jalapenos. Bullseye Grill delivers! teehee!

Then Eric and I both focused on packing. He had an antique aviation journal collection he'd decided to bring home. Since he knew he'd be bringing home more stuff, he brought the collapsible nylon suitcase we bought on our honeymoon, packed in his suitcase. I managed to get everything into my suitcase and backpack. I packed everything I thought might cause problems into my suitcase including my salt and Sarsaparilla bottle. The hand-crafted Amish somethings I didn't trust to the baggage handlers. Those went into my backpack to be carried on.

I slept so well that night. It was starting to be nice to sleep touching Eric all night.

	A Plains sunflower on the side of the road.
	A Common sunflower on the side of the road.
	Eric amid the sunflowers
	Me among the sunflowers
	We stopped for a cool sarsaparilla at Boot Hill in Dodge City, Kansas.
	The barkeep was very friendly.
	Front Street on Boot Hill in Dodge City, KS
	A typical weed near Eric's home town. He calls it 'Kansas Creeper'
	How pretty the weeds are near this old water tower!

Kansas Trip - Part 8 : the trip home

The trip out was so traumatic that I was on edge about the trip home. Sure, I tried hard to put a cheerful face on it but I was so homesick and ready to sleep in my own bed with my kitties. I'd been worrying about Scampi the whole time. I know her health is going downhill. What if she hid from finckynarcane as usual and was seriously ill? I tried to put the what if's out of my head.

We went to Eric's Aunt Mary's house to help her with her computer for a couple of hours before going to the airport. Again, just with her address the Street Atlas program guided us directly to her door. Somehow I managed to turn on the voice directions. Not bad! She would have missed one turn but she was good at telling us to turn around and go back or recalculating the route to make it work with where we were. Aunt Mary meant to cook hamburgers for us but we took too long teaching her how to use irfanview.

We got to the airport and at the security checkpoint I was selected for the extended search. Eric went by singing "naah nah-nah nah nah." I stuck my tongue out at him and cheerfully complied. The security guy did a very thorough search of my back pack. Was it the hand-crafted wooden somethings? No, he didn't unwrap them. He went through all the various pockets of the backpack and still looked like he was missing something. I mentioned he hadn't checked my cosmetics bag in the back compartment. It actually holds my toiletries. I'd packed my toothpaste in the suitcase at the last moment. Had I missed something else? Yes, I had. He pulled out a tiny tube of tooth polish, a tiny tube of toothpaste I'd forgotten about and my stick deodorant and waved them at the x-ray lady. I apologized and told him if he needed to throw them away it would be fine with me. He said no and put them back. How he managed to repack my backpack is a mystery to me. I'm a master at packing a lot in a small space.

Off to our gate we went. We decided to wait to eat at Dallas/Ft. Worth airport. The waiting room filled up with a variety of people. There were even two Amish couples travelling. Eric was bratty and asked me if they were allowed to fly. I told him only if they didn't own the planes. He laughed.

Our time to leave came and went and there was no plane at the gate. No announcements, either. The flight crew for our flight was waiting with us. Two screaming babies were among the crowd. One young mom had two very rambunctious preschool-aged boys she couldn't quite control. Another couple had a teenaged son and a daughter about the same age as the boys. They became instant friends, tearing around yelling and carrying on. The girl had a squeaky toy and a hobby horse. At one point she planted the hobby horse on the floor and began doing what looked like a pole dance on it, splaying her legs and gyrating her hips. Her big brother snatched the hobby horse from her as soon as he noticed and gave it to their mom. Oh my!

Our plane finally arrived half an hour late. They emptied it and serviced it then loaded us on. I asked the flight attendant at the door what the delay was. He said it was mechanical problems. Greeeat. Just what I want to hear. We're heading out into gathering thunderclouds on a plane that just had mechanical problems?

We took off without incident. All the babies and kids were far enough away not to be noticable. I got some dandy pictures of thunderheads from the topside. We landed without incident though the pilot gave us the wrong time and the wrong gate number. We thought we'd missed our flight. It turned out we had just enough time to sprint to it at a different gate. Thank goodness we checked the board! He would have sent us to the wrong side of gate C and we would have missed our flight.

By this time we were getting hungry. There was no line at all at Pizza Hut as we were passing by. We shot in there and bought two pizzas, two bottles of diet pepsi and sprinted to our plane. We took off on time and got home safely. Eric slept a lot of the way back. I got further into Stephen King.

Our luggage arrived in good shape. We found our shuttle. My car started right up and we got home without incident. The kitties are all fine and very happy to see us.

As we opened our checked luggage we discovered all of our bags had been inspected. Did my security checkpoint goof-up cause that? I haven't washed my shorts since I set off fireworks while wearing them. Did a dog pick up gunpowder residue? Or did the fireworks in the trunk leave enough residue that our suitcases picked it up? Did x-rays of the salt chunks make them suspicious? Oh well. No harm done. I do wonder what triggered it.

We slept like logs in our soft comfortable bed. Whenever I woke up, Miss Cactus would come up to give me kisses.

	Thunder bumper on the trip home.
	Some thunderheads are quite delicate to look at from the top.