On Our Way

Jun 23
Today we left Arlington, Va, headed up through Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and into Indiana. After about 12 ½ hours and 660 miles of driving, we pulled into a Pilot Truck Stop in Terre Haute, IN. William did a great job maneuvering us into one of the only empty truck spots. We were sandwiched between 18-wheelers running their refrigeration units all night long…we have slept better.

Jun 24
Today we drove north of St. Louis, MO, across the Mississippi River, through Kansas City, Topeeka, KS, and Salina, KS. We saw hundreds of new wind turbines on the hot, windy prairie. There were small herds of cows and the occasional horses grazing in the middle of desolate nowhere. We wondered how they survived the heat with no shelter, what they possible found to eat, and where they got their water.
After about 13 1/4 hours and 684 miles of driving we pulled into a Walmart Supercenter parking lot in Hays, Kansas to spend the night. It was 104 degrees. We were parked in the shade of a really fancy big rig pulling a Lexus. It turns out the rig was a $1.5-$2 million special order Newell coach! The owner was extremely nice and let us tap his 110V off his generator all night. We couldn’t run our A/C but we recharged our electronics and nuked some dinner. After spending some money in Walmart as “payment” for a free overnight parking spot, we got a good night’s sleep with our 2 12V fans keeping us “cool”.

Jun 25
We continued through Kansas on I-70 then veered southwest into Colorado. We drove a total of 336 miles and 6:20 hours, getting to our campsite in Lake Pueblo State Park near Pueblo, CO earlier in the day. This allowed us to goof off and relax after all that time in the car. Lake Pueblo SP has several campgrounds around Pueblo Reservoir and is a big boating and fishing area.

We saw a really neat polka-dotted lizard we never managed to get a picture of. In the oppressive heat, we did a quick hike up the rock formations and saw lots of swallows with their nests stuck onto the cliff faces.

The temperature was still between 99 and 104 degrees all day with gusty, dry winds. At least here we had 110V electricity for the A/C and we got our first real shower.