Storm Wall near Plains, Kansas

Jim, June 24:

We’re tooling along in Kansas, and travel was filled with the joys of using the old atlas and The Girl for navigation. Paper meets high tech. Hot, Sunny and miles of flat, straight road ahead. The only thing to break up the monotony was a construction zone with very aggressive rumble strips to slow down the traffic. Normally we wouldn’t have noticed. But then, passing cars and trucks began waving and gesturing to us. “Oh, look, more teardrop fans!”, “Isn’t it fun that we seem to be attracting attention with our cool trailer!?”

rear view galley lid check

Then Marilyn looked into her rear view mirror and noticed that the galley hatch was up. Hmmm. Perhaps we’re not as cool as we thought. Everyone was trying to tell us about the lid. *quiet chagrin*. We stopped and corrected the problem, and it became her job to periodically check on the galley hatch.

I’ve been through Kansas many times, and it’s normally quite dull, so I wasn’t expecting what I saw next. Out my side window, was one of the blackest skies I’ve seen recently with the clear indication of a wall cloud. Severe Weather! In other circumstances, I might have just tried to outrun the coming storm, but we were towing a small, light-weight trailer. On it’s first trip. Although it looks airworthy, I didn’t really want to try it. We needed shelter! Plains, Kansas wasn’t too far, and we could see a large grain elevator. We drove into town, headed straight for the elevator, and hunkered down. We had enough cell service to use our iPhones, and Dark Skies and Weather Bug gave us radar views of the storm. We spent the next hour in torrents of rain and blustery winds, but fortunately nothing worse.

Holiday Inn, McPherson, Kansas

We decided we could make McPherson, Kansas that night, and after a near rain-out the night before, and a near miss by a violent storm, we were feeling a little moist and beleaguered. The McPherson Holiday Inn would be just fine.