Day 70 - Paxico to Ellis, Kansas

You may remember that the last few days in Missouri have been HOT! Hot and muggy, to be precise. Last night, well, it was just darn cold at the Mill Creek Campground in Paxico, Kansas (photo left). Once again we hauled out the extra comforter and piled it on the bed. We didn't run the heater until I got up this morning and was dancing around the rig trying to get my clothes on as fast as possible. Then I turned it on for a few minutes. Of course, the heater in this rig works so well that a few minutes is all you can stand. But there it is, the unpredictability of the weather on this trip has been basically unbelievable. One day it's hot and muggy, the next day it's cold and rainy. Occasionally we also get rainy AND muggy. That's a trip in itself. And I know we've so far missed the snow and tornadoes that other locations have been blessed with, but keep in mind, we're not home yet.

Anyway, enough on the weather. You probably already have complaints of your own about your local weather. Today our plan was to just power our way across Kansas on Interstate 70 We didn't plan on stopping for anything unless it really sounded interesting. Now that I've said that, I have to tell you that Kansas, at least along I70, has an absolutely HUGE number of points of interest either on, or very close to the interstate corridor. I saw references to a Wizard of OZ museum, a motorcycle museum, a train museum, several historic forts, Dwight Eisenhower's museum and library, and the Walter Crysler museum (which I hope to see tomorrow). We also passed off-ramps for Dodge City, Abilene, and Hays, all having deep roots in the nineteenth century cattle industry and no doubt possessing exciting museums devoted to that industry.

But the one thing that really drew my attention was a brown sign early this morning encouraging us to take the next off-ramp and come visit the George Armstrong Custer home as well as the Fort Riley cavalry museum. Whoa! Now THAT was something I did not want to pass up. The next thing Concetta knew, we were motoring up to the front gate of Fort Riley, and a very young-looking Army corporal was asking for our drivers licenses. That formality out of the way, we were soon motoring through one of the most beautiful military posts we had ever seen. Nearly every building on the post is done in a buff-colored sandstone, which suggests something out of the Arabian desert and the French Foreign Legion. Just driving the tree-shaded lanes and avenues was in itself a great treat.

We actually spent more time motoring through the Fort than might have been necessary because we almost immediately missed the turnoff to the Custer house and spent another quarter hour just finding our way back to where we started. Thankfully, we came upon a group of soldiers beside the road who seemed to be waiting for some sort of ceremony to begin. We stopped and Concetta rolled down the window and asked one of the camouflage-suited soldiers if he knew where the Custer home could be found. The young man merely pivoted where he stood and pointed across the street and down a bit (photo right). All we had to do was pull forward thirty feet, park, and walk over.

That was all well and good, however we soon discovered that the Custer house was closed for the season and would not open until Memorial Day. Nevertheless, I took a few photos of the place, which turned out to be a sort of duplex. The Custers had lived in the western half and some other officer had lived in the eastern half. I guess having George and Libby living in the western half in 1866 and 1867 was fitting somehow since he was definitely headed west in a few years to meet his destiny.

All was not lost, even with Custer out of the picture. There was still the advertised "Cavalry Museum" to discover and hopefully tour. I was a little apprehensive that maybe the museum would also be closed, but we went ahead and found a nice long spot to park the RV. This we did, and quite near to the museum. Then, with our fingers crossed, we set out to discover what life was like in the U.S. Cavalry. Though I didn't expect Concetta to get very excited about a cavalry museum, the two-story facility, constructed in one of Fort Riley's very oldest buildings (photo left), was just marvelously done. As you might expect from the military, each and every display was expertly done and covered virtually every single aspect of a soldier's life from the Mexican War forward. Many of the exhibits included original equipment and clothing. Where necessary, exact replicas of items of clothing had been used as well.

When we got ready to leave the museum, we ran into a soldier who offered to show us the Custer house if we would wait until 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon as he had promised to show it to some other guests. However, very reluctantly, we decided to move on as it was still mid morning and we wanted to put some miles under us before nightfall. Kansas is a very long state to drive across. Still, should our travels ever bring us to Kansas again, I fully intend to make Fort Riley a stop.

Shortly after leaving Fort Riley and merging back onto Interstate 70 I looked in the side mirror and saw a black police vehicle approaching at a high rate of speed. At the time we were in the left lane so I dutifully moved over and he went flashing past, his red lights receding in the distance. Minutes later, we passed the trooper on the shoulder. He was just sitting here, his lights still flashing. We didn't think a thing of it until I once again glanced in my side mirror and saw the trooper right behind us. I didn't think there was any way he was after us since we were at that time doing sixty in a seventy-five mile an hour speed zone. Still, I pulled over to see what he could possibly want.

Moments later I watched as he started to approach my side of the truck, then changed his mind and came to Concetta's side. She rolled down her window as I fished out the registration and insurance cards. "Hi, folks," he said when he had approached the window.

We said hi and waited for him to explain what he wanted. "Where you headed," he asked. He was a young, dark-haired guy, perhaps in his late twenties, with a friendly, round face and a nice smile.

Concetta and chorused together, "Nevada."

"Where have you been?" he asked.

I said, "Where haven't we been. We've been on the road for ten weeks and have driven nine thousand miles."

His smile got even broader then. "Well, that sounds great," he said. "But let me tell you why I stopped you today. You have a plastic cover over your license plate on the rear and that's not legal in Kansas. I see you have the registration sticker on the outside, but you're going to have to get rid of that plastic cover."

I told him that I'd be happy to do that since we were planning on stopping in Abilene to have lunch and I'd pull the plastic off then. I waited for him to tell me that I should get out and do it right there and then, but he didn't say that. He just thanked us for wearing our seat belts, handed back our documents, and told us to have a nice day. And with that he went back to his car. It was probably the nicest traffic stop we ever had.

The miles to Abilene went by swiftly and we were soon ready to pull off and have lunch. Strangely, every since the traffic stop I had been hearing something weird rustling in the wind. I had asked Concetta to look and see if we had left a window open, but she said we hadn't. But once we made our lunch stop where I intended to fix my license plate problem, I saw immediately where the rustling was coming from: our awning, the one we never use, had started to tear loose and unwind from the ratcheting mechanism. About two feet of the awning had pulled out and was now draped over the side of the rig. It must have been billowing out behind us like a parachute for some time. Why the trooper hadn't mentioned it is totally beyond us. He must have seen it, maybe even decided to come after us because of it, but when he approached the truck he didn't say a word about it. Strange but true.

So, I got to spend the first part of my lunch hour using my handy pocket knife on the awning, stripping it away from the coach from end to end, and bagging it up. In the process I noted that the support arms were kind of floppy, so I wire-tied them up using three separate ties on each side. I also ripped off the plastic license plate cover, but left the corner where the orange sticker was adhered.

Going inside to eat lunch, I had no more then sat down when a white patrol car pulled up and sat in front of the rig. Having not a clue why yet another officer of the law would accost us since it appeared to be a different police agency, I went outside to meet the officer before he'd left his car. He rolled down the window. "Howdy," I said.

"Everything all right here," he asked. This policeman was on the heavyset side, possessed a sort of baby face, and looked even friendly then the last guy.

"Everything,s fine," I said. I pointed at the rig. "Our awning just tore loose and I had to cut the rest of it off and we put it in the trash bag over there. "I'll be taking the bag with us," I hastened to add, thinking he might worry about my littering up his highway.

Then I had basically the same conversation about the trip as I had had with the previously patrolman. I told him about all the miles we'd traveled and all the places we'd been.

"Like to do that someday," he said.

"Well," I said. "One of these days you'll be retired, too, then you can hit the road."

"I know," he said. "Just have twenty more years to go."

"It'll go quick," I assured him. "In fact, it'll go quicker than you think."

And that was it. He told me to take care, waved, and drove off down the side road, and I went back to eating my lunch. Before long we were back on the highway, enjoying the incredible cloud display Kansas was affording us today, and listening to our latest book on CD.

At one point I took a detour and drove north for a mile just so I could shoot the clouds with nothing but the Kansas prairie in the photo. In the past I know I probably have said things like, "why would anyone live in Kansas?" But we have found Kansas to be a very pretty state, full of potential adventure, and definitely possessing some of the nicest public servants we've ever encountered. Yup, we're going to have to come back some day when we can stay longer.

Tonight we're staying in a municipal camp in the tiny village of Ellis, just down the road from Hays, Kansas. We have to use a dump station in the morning since there are no individual sewer hookups, but the camps are nice (photos right and upper left).

Thankfully we got into camp early enough today so I had time to whip out the cordless drill and re-attach the support arm on my water supplies locker. I managed to tear it off when I was extricating the ladder today when I had to remove the awning. It's always something in the RV game. The key is to always bring along the necessary tools to solve your problem.