We had the feeling today that the trip so far has been preamble. After all, Minnesota isn’t new to us. And fully 25% of our trip has been spent in this car so far. Today we are expanding our boundaries… to Kansas! We said Kansas! a lot today. First though, coffee, and Georgia charmed the drive thru barista so much that she called three other people to the window to fawn. Rosie liked the coffee. I didn’t. But! We were driving to Kansas!
More specifically, we were driving to a campsite on the Saline River near Hays, KS. Across the river from a limestone bluff whose erosion is clearly ongoing and far enough from anyone else that Georgia roamed completely at will, this was one of the most beautiful camp sites I’ve ever stayed at. The weather was made to match and the firewood was dry. It was a one-match fire, folks.
Absolutely a perfect night — until I woke up around 1:30am. The flashes of distant lightning were rapid. I stepped outside to pollute the river a bit and noticed the wind. Then the clouds. I’m not a meteorologist, but it looked like an absolutely massive storm was heading right for us. I was right.
Thirty minutes later we had the camp haphazardly packed into the car just as the first drops began to fall. The wind was so intense that one of us had to hold the tent once we pulled up stakes, lest it Twister its way into the river. Rosie had been joking about tornadoes all day so this was not ideal. Once again, weather is driving us westward, but at 2:30 am this time.
As we left the camp via about 5 miles of dirt roads, we realized there was another camper behind us who made the same calculation. We had a storm-battered caravan all the way to the highway, where we went our separate ways. The plan: ride out the worst of it in a Walmart parking lot, then get on down to Colorado because what else were we going to do? Kansas!
One thing about Walmarts is they usually exist in places with cell service, unlike our campsite. We watched the radar as the most intense cell of the storm traced a path directly over where our campsite had been. Winds were 70mph. Kansas! You have beautiful parts but GOOD BYE!
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