Monday, August 28, 2006
WaKeeney KOA, Wakeeney, KS
August 25-27, 2006
So we decided that Friday would be a bit of a driving day. The Kansas/Missouri area was looking like thunderstorms all weekend, and we wanted to try to avoid the bad weather. We left Kan-Do around 11 am. We passed a few of our possible objectives because I just felt like driving. We have an informal rule that the driver gets to choose the music, so I had my iPod cranking. The ability to listen to your music despite the ridicule of family members is a surprisingly powerful motivator. With my little iPod shining and singing at me from its Hello Kitty FM Transmitter, I may as well have eaten a box of NoDoz.
A little while into our trip, we saw this sign, which I have never seen before, have you? I had Brian take a picture of it so that you, too, could puzzle over it.
What entails an incident in Kansas? Well, here it is. We took a picture of the incident just for you. Apparently a trucker managed to drive himself into a ditch. I guess that would count as an incident. The highway signs which say: "Stay awake! Take a break! For safety's sake!" come to mind. They are on 95 South, right? I hope this picture doesn't get into one of those stupid "women drivers" e-mails. 
The sky is so big in Kansas. The rolling landscapes of Missouri had changed to, I don't know, shallowly breathing landscapes? I would have snapped a photo, but I had Brian do it instead. See his arm in the sideview mirror? 
So as I said, we were driving all this way today in order to avoid predicted thunderstorms. As day turned to dusk, we saw one looming in the distance. Not too hard, since you can see for miles in Kansas. We could see the darkening clouds on the horizon, punctuated with sheets and forks of lightning. When it got dark, it was even more spectacular. Woo-hoo! I have always been a big fan of thunderstorms, and to watch this one for hours as we drove right towards it was unbelievable. Such mundane words to describe such an awesome sight. Especially the "woo-hoo". Sorry.Anyway, as we got closer, we considered stopping for the night, then put the idea aside. The most appealing campground was still on the other side of Kansas, about 150 miles away. Then "Pennies From Heaven" started playing, an old version with Frances Langford, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong. Frances Langford sang the opening line: "Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven", and a gentle patter of raindrops began on our windshield. Awwwww. It was so perfect it was cute. But by the time Bing Crosby started in, OMFG! Look at this picture that Brian took.
Rain sluiced and slashed at the windshield, wind buffeted the truck, mist from the impact of the rainballs veiled the road, and lightning as bright as an exponential camera flash blinded me to the road. There were these teeny little reflectors every 5 to 10 feet in the middle of the road. My eyes clutched at these pathetic beacons, and even they were hard to see. I felt bad for the cars behind me, but I drove about 20 miles an hour, half that when headlights from the other direction added to my blindness. I have heard of white out blizzards. I have never heard of rainstorms like that. I once drove through a hurricane, wondering why it was raining so hard as I cruised along at 70 mph. It was nothing to this. Adding to the torrential circus was the fact that the road sloped down in the direction of a theoretical breakdown lane. There may have been one. I couldn't see it. And when lightning flashed, it looked like there may have been a bicycle lane and a dropoff. I actually drifted off the road and wouldn't even have noticed except that it got very bumpy. As you can tell, we made it through alive, though eyestrained and weary from gripping the wheel. An hour or two or three later we made it to the exit for our campground. I took a right at the exit, as directed, and there was a Road Closed sign and cones across the road where we were instructed to take a left. Long story short, there was a small opening in the cones which we went through to reach my favorite campground so far, WaKeeney KOA. This place was perfect for us. It had a nice hot tub for Brian and Ian, a playground and pool for Z, and wireless internet. The bathroom was so clean I think you really could eat off the floor.
Since it is getting toward the end of the season, it was quiet, private, and we felt like we had the place pretty much to ourselves. And as we did late night registration, we got to pick our own site, so we were close to everything.
Wakeeney proper seems to be somewhat of a waystation, if you know what I mean. People seem to be just passing through. It still had some good restaurants and, surprisingly, they seemed to have high speed internet everywhere. We didn't do anything special, just rested and recovered, and I got a little caught up with the blog. Now I am behind again, of course. I can't really explain why either. Actually I can. When I started this post, a conflict happened on my computer and it froze. So I lost the post and got too aggravated to start again for a while.
Anyway, here are two picture of my impression of WaKeeney, Kansas. I think the first picture really speaks for itself. The second should, too, if you look at the larger view.
Our first night there, Friday night, we went to a restaurant in town, the Western Kansas Saloon and Grill on Main Street. The street itself is a lovely brick-paved thoroughfare about five blocks long. Maybe less. The saloon was a nice airy place with a little loft in the back. As I mentioned before, it had high speed internet. Not that we brought our laptops to the place.
Anyway, after dinner, we went for a walk down the street. I didn't take any photos, but one of the storefronts had all these custom-type bowling balls on display. The first window it was a rose, skull, eagle, etc in clear bowling balls, along with various sports team designs. But the second window? Wow. Disney princesses, The Lion King, Spongebob, Hello Kitty, The Incredibles, Princess Fiona, a smiley face, and 8 ball, 1and other random designs were featured. These are only the ones I remembered. There must have been at least 50 balls in the window. Do you care? Maybe not. But I thought it was really cool. Maybe I belong in WaKeeney...
Across the street was this curious feature. It helped me to understand the Christmas tree which stood inside the entryway of the Saloon and Grill. Actually, not really, it just tied in with it. It was a park sponsored by a local business, but why?
Of course, we had to go check it out. It was too weird to be believed. What is with these Christmas-themed places, and why do we end up in them? Ian and Zorah had a picture with Santa Claus. As you can see, Ian has been working on Blue Steel.
And in the spirit of all those picture e-mails of why not to take men on vacation with you, Brian decided to get a little friendly with Frosty.
As I said, nothing much happened in Wakeeney, but that's what was great about it. Still, it was time to move on. We wanted to hit the Rockies, so it was off to Colorado.
