Cassoday, KS - Frappez la Rue, Jacques

Time to be on our way for our winter Journey. We sure don’t want to be around here. We’ve spent many years in Iowa winters, we then moved to New Hampshire and endured their winters. Then, we really took the plunge and headed to Minnesota for their winters. Finally back to Iowa and now we’ve decided that winter is not our favorite season and we’re off.

We had done lots of our leaving tasks yesterday so were able to be on the road by 8:15. We have an Even Brake system which doesn’t like the cold any more than we do. Unfortunately, that means that it does not work when the temperature is below 50 degrees. Come on. What kind of system is that? I didn’t know we had bought a snow-birding brake system - and, if we had known this quirk a long time ago, we would not have bought this system. We didn’t get it hooked up until our first break for coffee about 1 1/2 hours down the road, when the sun had warmed the day.

The trip went well and we were moving so well that we didn’t take our usual night time break in Emporia but headed on down to the service plaza on the KS turnpike about an hour further.

Cathy made sure that we had some munchies on the way.

Later we took lunch.

Pretty typical trip down the road. Interstates are interstates: pretty dull but they get you someplace fast. Usually we like to take the side roads but today we’re just moving on down the highway. Tomorrow we take the side roads.

At night we stayed in the Service Plaza along the KS turnpike. Looks pretty empty now with two truck drivers sleeping but it got much busier later. We actually got in our daily 4-mile walk between this stop which was plenty big and the two rest areas we stopped in along the way. We like to stretch our legs in the rest areas and walk around them a few times each time we stop.

We turned off of Interstate 35 at Wichita and took 50 towards Tucumcari, NM and Interstate 40. OK drive but there are lots of trucks who also take this shortcut to 40. Today we also saw 3 huge turbine blades heading down the highway.

But, mostly it was trucks.

We stayed in Liberal, KS where there is a cool airplane museum. We’ve stayed here before (in fact, this was where we couldn’t get our bedroom slide in once. That time we got a ‘bonus’ day in Liberal until we finally got it in. We had to get rid of that RV when we got to Mesa since the awning had also fallen off. A long story and I’ve told all the gory details in fall of 2012.) This trip to Liberal was much better. We had a very quiet spot at the end of the parking lot. You can see some of the museum planes in the background

But if Liberal was where we had a slide problem in 2012, this time it was a generator problem. Before we walked we wanted to get the generator working for the refrigerator and Gary tried and tried to get it to go but - no go. Then he walked outside, opened the front hood of the RV, aha, the fuse is off. He reset it, the generator started like a champ and we took off on our walk.

As we were walking in the evening, we rounded a corner of the museum and saw this marvelous site: monarch butterflies on their annual migration. It is so difficult to get a picture of butterflies since they flutter by so fast. Flit here, flit there. But, here, I just waited a minute and one spread its wings to pose for me. Beautiful sight.

What a cool surprise.

Oops. looks like we’ve hit lots of insects on our trip through KS. Yecch. I won’t be taking many photos through the front windshield until I can clean it.

We stopped in Tucumcari for the night. Tucumcari has been skirted by Interstate 40 but is still living on its reputation as a good stop along rte 66. People drive their vintage cars here to stay in vintage motels and eat in vintage diners.

And, hey, we found a new Presidential Library. Personally, I’m thinkin’ that someone doesn’t like President Obama. Ya think?

Note that I am standing in weeds. Yep, cockleburs to beat the band. Ouch. Gary and I spent at least 5 minutes picking them off. We used two coins to pinch them off since we had nothing else to grab them with. It’s hard to avoid them - check out the light green sections on this map. Wonder how Georgia,Texas and Florida do it? Must be the heat.

And, then I got to wash the windshield. From the outside it looked smashing. Clean, clear and ready to go.

Then I looked inside. Oops. Where did all those streaks come from? Must be from the squeegee I used. Usually I use some microfiber cloths and the windshield shines. Obviously squeegees leave streaks.

This is not the fanciest RV park in the world but the owners are very nice and it’s one of the only ones in town. We were in amongst about 15 other RV’s from trailers to tag-axle Tours. Lots of people make this their first stop when they leave the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque which ended yesterday. Yep, the interstate system takes down another town.

On to Gallup. Funny, I thought that roadside billboards had been taken care of thanks to Lady Bird Johnson. But we found loads as we headed down Interstate 40.

We also found this cool car. I think it looks kinda of small to be safe on the Interstate.

It’s 99 degrees in Mesa now where we are headed. We’ll miss that by a day. Meanwhile we’ve got the comfortable 70’s and 80’s.