Emporia, KS - Frappez La Rue, Jacques

And, we’re off. Well, it was a little more complicated than that. We brought the RV home on Tuesday and parked it in the driveway. I cleaned a bit while Gary checked some of the mechanics. Wednesday I piled my counters high with my kitchen stuff: food, my favorite pots and pans, the Griddler, the toaster oven, the Vitamix - well, you get the idea. As much as I like a clean kitchen and clean counters, I had a mess. Clothes were piled around the bedroom. Miscellaneous stuff was piled around the lower level, Gary had filled the RV ‘basement’ with the tools, compressor, ladder, etc. Then we moved most of the piles inside and stored it. Luckily, we’ve done this before and remember where most of it goes.

Thursday we began to scurry since we planned to leave on Friday. All of a sudden, the time we had to pack and get organized had evaporated. To paraphrase an old saying: Friday came sooner than we expected. Huh? How does that happen? Easy - when you wait until the last minute. Although Gary and I hadn’t thought we had waited until the last minute and thought we were pretty well along. Funny thing about that.

Gary began bringing everything out to the RV while I stayed inside and stored. Fast.

Then inside. Every time I thought I had it made I found something else to do to make the house ready. Gary then decided to make some shelves in his ‘closet’ to make it easier to use. It is about 3’ tall and 1 1/2’ wide. The builders must have thought it could be used for hang-up clothes though no rod was ever built in. He also made a 5th shelf for my pantry. Of course, we’ve had 3 years to do this - why not do it on the last day before we leave?

Friday morning, Gary worked on all the water things making sure the water was turned off and that anti-freeze was in the pipes. I emptied the refrigerator and freezer, cleaned it and opened the doors. We said our good-byes to our neighbors, hooked up the Jeep and we were off.

NOT QUITE

Oops, not quite. The supplemental brake that we put inside the Jeep had a light on which said: ‘can’t find brake light.’ Hmmm. We worked on that for a while and then decided that we would go without the supplemental brake until we had a day to look at it - in Liberal, KS where we plan to stay 2 nights.

Oops, not quite. The tow bar isn’t acting quite right. Gary toured our development until both bars on the tow bar wre straight.

Now we’re off.

Delightful trip, sunny day, not much wind, warm temperatures. And we’re off for parts unknown. Life is good. Let’s turn on the Sirius for some tunes.

Oops, not quite. The Sirius has a message saying that it can’t find the antenna. We spent abut 1/2 hour talking with Sirius techs but finally decided that it must be the fixed antenna in the RV which is up on the roof. But, hey, what about the extra antenna we have for our portable player? Sure enough, that works fine.

We circled Kansas City and headed on down to Emporia, KS for our favorite ‘campground’ on 35: Flying J. They’ve got a section off to the side for RV’s, not near the noisier trucks. We pulled in about 7:00 and I began on dinner.

Dinner done, showers taken, time to fire up the generator to replenish our batteries.

Oops, not quite. When you have 1/4 or less of a tank of gas, the generator is not able to use any of the gas (it’s saved for travel) and we are below 1/4 but plan to fill up tomorrow.

‘Oops, not quite’ seemed to be our motto today. However:

        the tow bar finally kicked into the right position

        the Jeep supplemental brake met Gary, the mechanic, on Sunday in Liberal, KS

        we had another antenna for the Sirius

        we’ll fill the tank with gas tomorrow and the generator will run fine

Life is good. Small problems make the adventure - at least, isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?

Staying in the Flying J is always a bit eye-opening. We see things we don’t often see in our everyday world. Next to us in the lot is a pick-up truck with a Kentucky license plate towing a rig on which 2 cars could be hauled. Inside the pick-up truck are a man and a woman just sitting there with their I Phones. They are still there in the morning and still there when we left. They must be waiting for someone but what an uncomfortable place to sleep and clean up.

We also noticed 3 instances of the ‘Flying J Kid Swap’. Exes who have the children meet in the Flying J parking lot to swap the kids with the other Ex. In one case, the kids got out of the father’s car, rushed to the mom’s car, high-fived her, rushed back to their dad, high-fived him and loaded their luggage and themselves into the mom’s car. Meanwhile the parents stood quietly talking, even laughing off to the side.