Zamurphsky: Year end review-part 8: Oct. first half- Day 17-30 of RV trip

October (1st half)

Our next destination was a visit to my sister Elizabeth and brother-in-law, Rick, who live in Kansas City, Missouri. On the drive from Omaha to Kansas City, I was mesmerized by the changing look of the sky. We started out with big puffy clouds in the morning.

And as we drove, the clouds seemed to transform into ever-changing configurations. The next few pictures show how the sky changed it’s look throughout the day. I’m not sure why I was so fascinated by it, but one of the things I love about travelling in the RV is that I have a chance to take in the beauty of the sky and the landscape around me. I love the wild places of dense forests and high mountains and layers of colored rocks in the desert as well as ocean waves crashing against jagged boulders and places that are preserved for the beauty and the wildlife they harbor, but I am also awed by the expanses of fields, whether freshly harvested and mown down or miraculously growing in meticulously orderly rows.

This is where I have to give a shout out to my incredible husband, who affords me the privilege of this kind of observation. Even though when we first bought our RV, I thought maybe I would try to learn to drive it, and he encouraged me to do so, I could never overcome my fear of the task. He has never insisted, and he gave up asking me to try a long time ago, when he realized I really didn’t want to do it. His only requirement of me now is to keep him awake by talking when he starts to feel himself getting tired. And he encourages me to take as many pictures as I can. I give him a ton of credit for the excellent job of driving that he does. And I adore him for letting me observe and record the beauty around us.

We passed by the Kansas City Royals Stadium on our way to our campground which turned out to be about 30 miles from my sister’s house, but we rented a car for our stay so that it wouldn’t be too much trouble for us to drive back and forth.

When I checked us in, this sign on the left had caught my eye about a place we could call to order BBQ and have it delivered to our RV. I thought that would be the perfect thing to have for dinner. Kansas City is famous for it’s BBQ so it had to be good, right? The last time we visited, we had gone with Bets’ & Rick to a place called Jack Stack, which we had thoroughly enjoyed. Well, let’s just say this was no Jack Stack. But at least I didn't have to cook.

I let my sister know that we’d arrived and we made plans to have breakfast together the next morning. For breakfast we went to a little place called Caleb’s that had outdoor seating and we had a fantastic breakfast. It was a little chilly outside but we survived. We spent that day discussing what we wanted to do for the four days we would be visiting (I’m all about a plan.) And we went shopping for supplies for the meals that we would be cooking. That evening we made Mexican food (have I mentioned that it’s my favorite?) and it was really good. I was especially impressed with how good the corn was. And then I thought about all those cornfields I’d been admiring.

Our plan for the next day was to take a walk on a pretty trail just a couple of miles down the road from my sister’s house. It was an easy, level walk through beautiful trees along a paved walking trail, over a couple of bridges that crossed pretty streams of water. The dogs liked it a lot. My sister told me that she drives past this place every day on her way to work. It’s actually in Kansas City, Kansas-so we were able to say that we visited another state on our trip! The next day, we went back to the same trail and took a different direction which was just as lovely.

Roscoe wanted to show his appreciation.

This was the second day.

I made sure to ask what kind of birds these were so that I would identify them correctly as geese- not ducks in a row.

These large metal sculptures reside on the Greenway that runs alongside the road next to this park. I never found anything that said the titles of the artwork, but I thought they were pretty impressive. I wasn’t sure what they represented, but this the one on the left looks like feathers. And the other one makes me think of a bull.

After our walk that day, we had decided to go out for dinner. We had to find a place that was dog friendly so we ended up at a groovy joint called “Rock & Brews.” It was fun to learn that it was founded by a couple of members of the band Kiss and from what we could discern on the website it sounded like a really fun place to have dinner. It did not

disappoint.

We were able to dine inside because it was open and airy and all the patrons were seated at least six feet apart. The staff all wore masks and we only took ours off to eat.

The walls were covered with depictions of all kinds of rock bands.

And the dogs even got special bowls to drink from. We had a fun time and the food was really good, too!

Oh, and because it was a sports bar, there was a Kansas City Chiefs game on TV. You can see the guy in the Kelce (Chief's player) shirt at the table behind us. Kansas City is very proud of their Chiefs football team and their Royals baseball team (and with good reason.)

In this pic you can see the bartender with a mask on.

By the next day, we were a little tired of walking, so we decided to stay at the house and play a game instead. We had purchased a Costco lasagna to make for dinner along with a salad and garlic bread. The game we decided to play was “Worst Case Scenario.” We teamed up as couples and had a lot of laughs at the silly scenarios we were presented with as well as the sometimes ridiculous “right” answers. We enjoyed

our dinner and soon it was time for us to take our leave.

Even though our campground was pretty far from my sister’s house, we had a great stay there.

After returning our rental car, we had another nice breakfast at a place called The Big Biscuit before we got back on the road. I gotta say, the Midwest does breakfast right!

We saw more idyllic farmland on our way to our next stop in Oklahoma.

The KOA where we stayed in Tulsa was next to a Cherokee Casino and the Will Rogers Downs racetrack.

The campsites were large and widely spaced and the dogs enjoyed the clear view they had of everything going on around them.

Vladi and I took a walk to the casino to explore what was available to order for dinner and to see if anything interesting was going on there.

We found a place inside to order our dinner but the indoor activities were very limited so we took our dinner back to the RV with us so we could watch the vice-presidential debate on our outdoor TV. We don’t use the outdoor one very often because it can be tricky to see if the ambient light is at the wrong angle, but that night, we were able to see the screen with no problem. We enjoyed our dinner and the debate and the balmy evening.

The next morning, when I went out to take the dogs for their morning constitutional, I saw that it looked like people were setting up the track for a race that day. And soon, there were people warming up their horses.

One rider was leading one frisky horse around while riding on another one. She snapped at me that I had my dogs too close to the fence. I hadn’t realized that the horses could smell the dogs and that was what was making them a skittish. I was chagrined so I moved away from the fence but tried to still watch from a greater distance.

Here’s a look at the building. You can see the viewing stands on the left side and the entrance to the casino on the right.

We got on the road again after breakfast and drove through most of the length of Oklahoma. We made one stop at an “Indian Trading Post” to see what kind of souvenirs they might have.

Vladi wanted to get a picture in front of this big Indian brave. We did find a couple of things we liked in the store and then continued on to our campground in Elk City. I’m beginning to think that KOA should pay me for all the advertising I’m doing for them.

One benefit of rising early to take the dogs out is that I get to see sunrises like this.

This campground was a little more tightly arranged than some of the others, but it was still nice.

At this point in our trip, we were not staying anywhere more than one day and we were trying to get an early start to cover as much ground as we could toward home. On day 25 of our trip, we drove through the small northern portion of Texas between Oklahoma and New Mexico, where our next campground was in Tucumcari.

In the distance there are probably as many windmills as there are cows in this picture.

The sunset that night looked a lot like the sunrise had that morning!

We speculated a lot about the people that could live in these houses that were so far from anyone or anything else.

I would file this under, “things you would never see in California!”

We saw a lot of trains crossing the wide open spaces of the country.

New Mexico has a number of buttes (pronounced beauts as in beauty) and mesas. In the picture below, if you can see between our collection of windshield bugs, the highway passed between a couple of them. The rocks are really pretty striated shades of red, brown and yellow.

We stopped for a second night in New Mexico, near the town of Grants.

It was next to an interesting area of lava activity. We took the dogs on a walk next to the campground that displayed educational signs explaining what we were seeing.

Here’s our boy, Roscoe. He’s a good little traveler.

The next day we made it to Arizona.

Although this highway sign didn’t say anything about masks, most of the businesses that we dealt with had signs on the doors requiring them.

The Williams KOA was a beautiful campground nestled in the mountains of Arizona, just beyond Flagstaff.

It wasn’t far from the Grand Canyon. In fact, the place where we had breakfast the next morning was called Grand Canyon Coffee. But we did not plan go to the Grand Canyon on this trip.

We were anxious to get home.