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!

May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Five of Five Series

Cheers! Part 5 is finally done!

Part 5 is Highway 18 - Wilson Lake- Lawrence - Tennessee

I know - I've taken way too long to get caught up with last May, but the last few months have been extraordinarily busy!

We start part 5 in Stockton. It's really strange not to have parents to visit here anymore. Or a reason to come back here anymore. There's no alumni association for 8th grade graduates - my high school is in a different town. We found a place to gas up the car just off Highway 183 - yep the same highway mentioned in part 3! 183 does play an important part in connecting points from my life. We drove to Plainville and turned left onto Highway 18.

I planned the Highway 18 route for one reason - to drive by the prettiest lake in Kansas, Wilson Lake. This highway also drifts southeasterly which was the direction we needed to go to get back onto I-70. 

I couldn't tell you the last time that I was this part of the highway to Lucas. But since I wasn't driving, I was able to observe. Around Codell, a high pointed ridge came in view from the passenger side. The highway basically followed this high ridge. And at Lucas, turning onto Highway 282, we had to cross that ridge to get to Wilson Lake. I just never saw that landscape in this way before -- the perks of not driving.

Wilson Lake is just stunning. An Army Corps dam on the Saline River creates the lake. The Dakota Sandstone is just brilliant in the sunlight. Yep - this is Kansas. I created a reel for my Instagram account from the video I took of Wilson and it racked up 1000 views in no time!

Wilson Lake

282 intersect I-70 at a desolate entrance ramp. We hopped onto I-70 East and towards our next destination: the Country Inn and Suites in Lawrence, KS. Going to Lawrence is like going to Holy Ground for me. The home of KU - the best education out of the four colleges/universities I attended. Mount Oread. Home Sweet Home to Me. My thesis is on the shelf in one of the KU libraries.

The hotel was by far the nicest hotel out of the five we had stayed at on this trip.

The next day was Monday but all of that driving on Sunday put a dent into us. Woo - the Tennessee - Georgia border seemed a long ways away still. Because the hotel was located on Highway 10, we just took it into KC and then back on I-70.  The 3-hour drive in Missouri was ok but wow once we got into Illinois, we were tired but still a long ways back home. In that state of mind, the miles drag by. I was convinced we needed to make it to Paducah - and we did but it was a struggle. We made it to the Drury Inn in time for free food -- that's a plus!

Paducah back home was a shorter trip of 4 hours -- back in time to pick up the dog! Here is picture of going down Monteagle -- three lanes, 6 percent grade, runaway strips. Back in the ridges and plateaus of Tennessee!

Monteagle descent

Epilogue:

Since I won't have a Father's Day blog post from June 2021 -- here is a picture of my beautiful cake resembling a beer mug! 

May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Four of Five Series

 Part 4 is Mt. Vernon - the Farm

Ash Creek valley and the road past the Hunter farm

Part 4 stays in Rooks County. It's not a very far drive from Nicodemus (Part 3) to Mt. Vernon Cemetery. As we drove up Highway 24 east from Nicodemus, we noticed how full Webster Lake was - it was really full of water after the May rain!

Mt. Vernon is where my great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunt, other related family members, and my Dad were buried. 

Me standing next to Dad's grave marker

When we walked over to Dad's gravesite, we left a note, wept a few tears, told him I was back to visit. I noticed that the rock that David left for his grandpa 9-months earlier was still there.

Grandparents

Cemetery road from front gate

Great-grandfather buried on other side

The old family rumor was that my great-grandfather said he wanted to be buried by the family of his first wife and my great-grandmother, his second wife, didn't object. He is buried next to his first wife. My great-grandmother outlived her husband by 24 years -- there was some age difference between the two.

This marked my second visit back to Mt. Vernon after Dad's graveside service. When you are out there, you can hear the wind whistling through the fence wire and the blades of grass yielding to it. Losing a parent and coming back to visit is not easy. I was wondering about Dad -- he was the caretaker for this cemetery for many, many years. What did he think about when trimming around his parents and his brothers gravesites. One will never know now.  

Leaving from the cemetery, we took the very short drive to what was the Hunter farm. Fewer than four miles. My mom had told me about the Hunter home being leveled but nothing hit like seeing it a few years ago. My children saw the vacant site. The one person who had not was the driver - my wife. She knew it but nothing prepares one for the vast emptiness that was a home. It hit her hard driving up to the old driveway entrance.

Used to be a two-story house here with thick limestone walls.

So many generations of family grew up here -- it is like a part of the root is gone within your soul. My great-grandfather built buildings around the area from limestone. The house was originally a limestone house that was added onto many times.

Leaving the old farm site, we headed towards Stockton. Part five will pick up from there back to Tennessee.