52317 miles on odometer before leaving the Great Plains State Park. I just stopped by the ranger's office and called my family to let them know that they need not worry about me.
Today is Easter, and it's the day Christ rose from the dead. I'm sitting at one of the designated electric camp site trying to recharge my computer while typing out some journal entries.
Last night was pretty horrible. The wind started blowing very hard, and I was afraid my tent wouldn't make it through the night, and unfortunately, I was right. Sometime after 2:00 am, the hook of one of the stakes broke and my tent kinda gave in to the wind. I had to take the tent down and run out to my truck to sleep in the back. It was so calm and warm inside the truck. I'm just glad it wasn't also cold and rainy last night; otherwise, it would have been miserable.
When I woke up, there was no one at the park on my side of the campground. I'm glad I didn't know that then when I went to bed; otherwise, I would have been scared all night.
There's a lake here and it's not too bad of a view. I'm going to take a few pictures before I leave if I can. I'm having trouble sending the digital pictures from the digital camera to the laptop.
Today I'm heading towards Kansas on the fourth day of this trip. I'll have to stop at Wal-mart or another store to see if I can't get something to replace that stake.
As I drove, I thought how great life was. This should be what life is about. Another day, and I think about what's new for me today. Who I may meet, what can I expect, where will I go? I won't meet the same person twice or see the same view twice on this trip. Every moment is a new and woderful experience. I never saw the movie Forrest Gump, but there's a quote he uses: "Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you'll get" or something similiar to that. This means that you have to make the best of what life gives you...the good with the bad.
I got into Kansas at 12:30 pm, and I haven't been here since 1993 when I took an impromptu 4 day roadtrip to Colorado. I arrived in Kansas via Highway 132, which then becomes 179 in Kansas. The speed limit in the small towns I have gone through has been 25 mph, while in Oklahoma it was 20 mph.
Stopped at QT to get some gas. As I was waiting for my credit card to go through, a woman walked by, and I looked at her. Then I looked at the clerk and gave him an approving smile of the woman, and he said to me, "You's wild." Generally, I don't look at a woman and then look to a stranger to see what he thinks....I don't quite know what came over me.
I stopped in Wichita, Kansas, and it doesn't seem to be a city with a population of 300,000. The only large corporation I saw here was Boeing, which had a pretty nice facility. (It had it's own lake). I drove down Broadway, and mostly I saw motels. At one part of Broadway, it seems like every other business was a motel. I went into this motel (about 6 rooms) and I asked about the sign which has a day rate of 9.95? I asked the western Asian woman what that is, and she said it was for 2 hours. Two hours? Immediately I thought that prostitution must be big business in the part of town. How can so many motels afford to compete with one another? One motel had a weekly rate of $89. This motel, Surf Motel, charged $26/night.
As I drove down the industrial section of Broadway Street, a large brown abandoned building caught my attention and reminded of a homeless man I saw once near downtown Houston. My mom and I were driving home, and I saw a man between a tree and a building sqautting partially and taking a dump in public. At first I naturally thought that was weird and funny, but as we drove home, it sadden me. Sadden me that a man has no where to turn, sadden me that for most people, they think about more of what they want rather than what they have. What a worn brown building can do....
There wasn't really anything else to see here. The local Wal-mart was closed due to the holidays. The downtown area was fair size, but I would think this town should feel much larger with a population of 300,000. I stopped at a Long John's Silver to get something to eat before I headed north.
Most of the trip in Kansas has been through dirt roads. I would guess that about 70% of my driving has been through dirt roads. Late in the evening or early in the morning I can generally tell which direction I'm going using the sun as reference: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
That night I settled in at Milford Lake State Park near Manhattan, Kansas (home of Kansas State University). By the time I found the camp site and registered, it was very dark, and I had to use my flashflight to set up the tent. I had a bad feeling the momemnt I arrived because today was so different the previous 2 nights where there were many campers at the parks. Nervously, I attempted to sleep the night away.
