Thanksgiving 2021 Trip to Kansas

Beauty in spacious skies

We made the decision to visit mom and my family for Thanksgiving back in August! A twist in what we used to do which was to travel for Christmas. But we had stopped traveling to Kansas for Christmas after 2008. The trips were more random and not based on any typical expected family meetings. We probably should do Thanksgiving trips more often! It was great to see everyone and all in one house!  I know my Dad would have loved seeing it.

What was really great for my benefit in reconnecting: this was the second trip in one year back to Kansas! If roots mean anything to a person, going back to visit them every so often is essential for personal balance and harmony, I think. We've been a little sporadic in our visits there and the two trips in one calendar year really gave me the boost I needed.

Unlike in May where we seemed to take our time going out, which in hindsight might have been a mistake, we made great time and stopped in Columbia, MO at a Drury Inn.

We reached our vacation destination at an airbnb in Great Bend. Enough bedrooms for everyone coming in! We would be here for three nights.

Thanksgiving Day was the next day and we cooked up a lot of food! Too much food! It was great to have families visit: grandmother, aunts, uncle, cousin. It's too easy to grow separately and not see the connection.

On Friday, we drove a lot of miles but we saw a lot of things along the way!  Driving two cars, we made a convoy to see Mom/Grandma in her new assigned room at the home.  We spent some time talking and seeing her inside and outside of the place.  Her new room is so much better and has a great view of the school. Pixel enjoyed being with grandma and running around on the grass!

We then drove highway 183 all the way up to northern end of Rush County to stop at Pat's Beef Jerky in Liebenthal. If you haven't tried Pat's - it's worth stopping in or ordering online to have it shipped to ya. The name of the town came from Liebenthal, Russia where many of the settlers immigrated. Then we made it to the big city of Hays!  Well, big in comparison to anything around it for many miles. We saw the buffalo again. The babies we saw in May were getting so big!

 We then made the round trip from Plainville to Webster Lake via Webster Lake County Road out of Zurich, then to the family cemetery, the always heart-crushing stop at where the farmhouse once stood, then to Stockton and back south again to Great Bend.  

G had the awesome idea to have a Christmas tree with ornaments next to Dad's grave. This picture was one of my most liked on Instagram during 2021.

The three D's left flowers on everyone's grave site, even great-grandpa who is buried on the other end of the cemetery. 

The Thanksgiving trip ended too soon the next morning on Saturday. We each drove our three cars in separate directions. But each one of us had to take highway 156 out of Great Bend to I-70. I reflected that each of us now have our lives but we are still greatly connected not only as immediate family but with those family members who supported G and I growing up. One car headed north from Salina on 81, one car headed northwest out of Topeka on 4, and G and I headed east I-70 and south on I-55.

The two carloads heading north made it back in one day. We had the longer drive and broke it up into two days. I decided I did not want to go through all of the Illinois construction on I-64, I-57, and I-24. It was just too much for the expected holiday weekend traffic on Sunday. And the next day, I was right! Just a good guess!  

We stopped at the Drury Plaza hotel in Cape Girardeau, MO. Unlike the one in Columbia, we checked in on time for the free hor-doeurves!  And free breakfast the next morning. I was thinking of driving to Dyersburg to catch I-40, 840, I-24 but as we approached the I-55/I-57 exchange the traffic delay was getting larger and larger for that route.  I finally decided at almost the last minute to have G turn east onto I-57 to cross over on two-lane highways to Paducah and I-24.

What a route! We took highway 62 which is basically just an elevated roadbed through the Mississippi River floodplain. We were in the area where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers merge. It was interesting to see how barren of human life was through there. Then we crossed two bridges, one was familiar one was not and it was scary.  That bridge is called the Cairo Mississippi Bridge. It is so narrow and long that semis have lost side mirrors to opposing traffic. The bridge pops and clanks and all kinds of noise when driving over it. Here is a picture of it from commonwiki photos.

After crossing that bridge, we immediately crossed a bridge much more familiar to us, the Cairo Ohio River Bridge which landed us into Kentucky. From there we made it home in great time about 5 and half hours. Just enough time to unpack, eat, and get ready for work the next day!