99 degrees and 8% humidity… must be the western US

But that wind  is still hot!  I will take dry heat over high humidity, though.

Through Kansas for 2 days.  It is flat, flat, flat… Eastern Kansas is pretty interesting.

 www.kansasflinthills.travel 

We learned that only 4% of the tall grass prairie remains, in the “Flint Hills”.  The tall grass (up to 6 ft tall by fall) prairie used to extend from Indiana to Eastern Kansas, Manitoba to Texas.  Most of it is now converted to agricultural use.  

As we “breezed” (if that term applies to pushing an RV - it doesn't....) west through Kansas, we paralleled many of the famous pioneer trails west: Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, Lewis & Clark Trail,  Chisholm Trail, Pony Express Route (1860 – 61!) etc.

Perry State Park was a nice over-nighter for us.  A nice park,15,000 acre Corps of Engineers lake, 300 campsites, and certainly geared for water sports such as fishing.  The Corps of Engineers lake is beautiful and apparently well stocked, based on the fish cleaning we saw this morning.

Last night it was COOL ENOUGH to open the windows in the wee hours.  Cayotes, very close, barked and called.   

A car wash (boy, does she get dirty, tagging along behind the rv..), cleaning of the air conditioning filter, dumping black and gray waters (guess which is which…..), and we left for further west. But we constantly and slowly motored uphill for 8 hours, from an elevation of about 1300 ft to over 3000 ft here, near Colby.  

Past the beginnings of the huge wind turbines.

Past the mamouth  grain silos/elevators.  Those are regular power lines in front of the silos.  They won’t be putting anything from this field in front into those silos, unfortunately.

We did pass several fields of sunflowers.  Apparently THEY like dry weather!

We had planned to stay at ---gasp --- the hot parking lot in Wal-Mart for the night, as there are no convenient RV parks close by. Well, except those that cost in excess of $50/night.  So, here is our campsite for tonight…beautiful and shady, huh!!!???

The State of Kansas provides RV parking, water, and sewage dump in many of its Rest Areas.  We are in a rest area just west of Colby, KS, cooling off in our air conditioned RV, and settled in for the night.  Tomorrow,  RV willing, we’ll be at St. Vrains State Park in Longmont, our home for 10 days while we visit Luke’s daughters and our grandbabies.

By the way, the past 2 blogs have been brought to you courtesy of my Mobile Hotspot from my phone ---- gotta love technology!