Driving Through Kansas

Yesterday while driving through Nebraska and into Kansas my car let me know it was time for an oil change. Literally, I got a flashing light on the dash board saying my oil life was at 0%. So as we crossed from Nebraska to Kansas I called and found a GMC dealership in Topeka. I talked to the service representative and told him we were traveling through and asked if he had an appointment available for sometime today. He said he only had a 10:00am spot. I took it!

This morning we got up and loaded the car and went out to do a couple of things before bringing the car in. First, we headed to the Equality House. This house is located across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church. Some guy bought the house and had it painted in the rainbow colors of the gay flag. It has since become the offices of the Planting Peace organization. So, we had to go and get a picture.

After doing that we next headed to the Capitol. It opened at 8:00am and we were a little bit early. We ended up walking around the outside and took some pictures and then when the building opened we went in. We went through security and the guard there showed us the self guided tour brochure and told us we could wander around on our own. The tour desk people didn’t come in until 9:00am. So we did the self guided tour and went on all five floors of the building. Pretty much everything was open. The Supreme Court, House and Senate Chambers, House and Senate Galleries, and the State Library. We had a nice conversation with a woman who worked the front desk at the library. It is a beautiful building and we enjoyed our tour. Before leaving the Capitol I stopped by the tour desk to get my Capitol Collection stamp. After about 45 minutes we left the Capitol and headed for our next destination.

It was a short drive to Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. This site is housed in the old Monroe Elementary School. When we entered, we were greeted by an enthusiastic ranger and a volunteer. The ranger gave us a 15 minute introduction and story and then we explored the rest of the place on our own. It was a very interesting and a little disturbing time in our history. And I couldn’t help thinking that we didn’t really learn much from our past history. Our country at this time seems to be hell bent on repeating some of the worst times of our history. I left this site feeling saddened that we still don’t value human life if it doesn’t measure up to ours. All I could think of were those kids being torn away from their families and the emotional and psychological issues these kids will have from this abuse. We are a nation of sick and twisted people when you look at how we are treating other humans – I am not proud to be an American at this time in history.

At 9:45am we headed for the GMC dealership (Ed Bozarth GMC) to get the car serviced. The service guy told us it would probably take an hour and a half. So we found a place in the waiting area and read. They had a couple of issues come up and we ended up being there for three hours. This really changed our plans for the day. While sitting at the dealership we read and I worked on editing pictures – it kept us busy while waiting for the car.

It was almost 1:00pm before we left the dealership and before we left Topeka we decided to get some lunch. After eating we headed to Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. At the preserve I got my cancellation stamps and a postcard. Then we set out and explored the area a little. We didn’t want to spend a lot of time here since we were already three hours behind our schedule. I think we only spent about 30 minutes wandering around before getting back in the car and headed out.

Our destination for tonight is Borger, TX. I thought by this time we would have been further along, but the oil change took way longer than expected. So we cancelled going to Fort Larned National Historic Site and just set a course for Borger. The GPS told us it would take six and a half hours to get there. So we hunkered down and prepared ourselves for a llllooooonnnnnggggg drive. Our drive from Tallgrass took us through Pratt and then to Liberal. We decided we needed a break so we stopped to find a letterbox at Dorothy's House. We followed the yellow brick road and found Fly, My Pretties by Wronghat.  After stamping in and replacing the box we got back on the road and continued our drive.

It wasn't long before it got dark and then we hit a storm. Not a rain storm, not a snow storm but a bug storm. There were so many bugs it looked like it was snowing or something. The windshield was getting so covered but we didn't want to use the wipers and smear it and make it worse. This continued for most of the drive. At 11:00pm we arrived in Borger. All we could think about was taking showers and getting some sleep. I did some of this post while we were driving - I typed it in Word hoping I could finish quickly when we got to the hotel. It is now 1:00am and I need sleep. We set alarms for 9:00am since tomorrow we are headed home and we don't have a whole lot planned.