The airlines do strange things occasionally. This flight is boading with a number of empty rows and we’re sitting three across on both sides of the aisle in this exit row. When the door closes I’m moving!
Waiting For My Flight
The Pocatello airport is very quiet this Saturday morning. My flight to Salt Lake City leaves in about an hour where I’ll connect with a flight to Portland, then to Narita, Japan followed by a flight to Manila. I’ll be there about 23 hours from now.
When I was checking in, the following conversation occurred:
A young lady came out of the back room and asked the lady checking me in, “Shall I take off my pants?”
“Please don’t, ” I said. “It’s too early to get my heart rate up that high!”
“Bet you don’t get that offer very often, at least from airline counter clerks,” the lady checking me in responded. I allowed as how this was a first for me. “Take them off,” said my check-in lady to the other girl, “and I’ll throw them up in a tree and pay you back!”
It turns out that these folks are having a weightloss contest and at 10 a.m. they will weigh in. The winner takes home the cash prize.
“So, you must know each other from the past. Are you related?” I asked.
“We’re cousins,” the checkin lady said. “Many years ago we were jumping on a trampoline and she talked me into taking off my pants so I could jump higher. Then she threw them into a tree and I had to get one of the boys to climb up and get them.”
The pants looked to be pretty bulky, I conceeded. They were airline-issued pants for working out on the flightline. “You should take every advantage. Go ahead and take them off!” She just laughed and went back into the back room. Dang!
The Grass Is Mowed … I’m Too Old For This??
When we were living in Colorado Springs, we had a fairly small grassy area needing to be mowed. Nina bought an inexpensive walk-behind mower (more adequately described as a push-along mower). We brought that here to Pocatello where we have about four times the amount of grass needing to be mowed. Last summer I hired a young man to mow the grass, but haven’t had an opportunity to talk to him about mowing the grass this year. But, there was no way that I was going to mow the grass again having to push that other mower around the yard. I mowed the grass before we left on our road trip and it had grown considerably while we were gone (helped by the fact that the sprinklers were set to run every morning). My brother Perry told me that he’d bought a new Troy-Bilt self-propelled mower with an electric start. I wasn’t so sure that I needed an electric start mower, but I definitely wanted a self-propelled machine. Yesterday I went to Lowe’s and came home with the same mower that my brother bought. I mowed the front yard yesterday, which wore me right out. I was very happy for the self-propelled aspect of the machine. The only problem with it is that the speed the mower propells itself is set by how hard I squeeze a small handle. It’s easy to squeeze too hard and have to run to catch up with the mower! Tonight I mowed the back yard. It was definitely easier than previous times mowing the yard! This has already been a worthwhile expense. Maybe it’ll help entice our young man to mow the yard again this year? I hope so! I’m too old for this and Nina’s knees aren’t made for the walking, either.
As a result of the past two nights being taken up with lawn mowing, I’ve not done anything more with pictures. Maybe tomorrow??
We’re Home!
We’ve arrived home after eighteen and a half days on the road. We arrived in Soda Springs last night about 5:30 p.m. and spent the night there. My brother Perry and his wife Chris along with my sister Eileen were there for the holiday. We had a lot of fun visiting, talking, and eating. Perry roasted the chickens on the grill using his beer-can basters (Diet Coke with Lemon, actually). We enjoyed the stay. We arrived in Pocatello about 5:30 p.m. today, dumped the tanks, and put pretty much everything away. We’ll head for bed in a few minutes and we’re back to full reality tomorrow.
We drove a total of 5,276 miles, mostly on nine and a half driving days. We got as far east as Easton, Pennsylvania and as far south as Paduca, Kentucky. Gasoline prices ranged from $2.579 per gallon in Green River, Wyoming to $3.079 a gallon in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The average price was $2.756 per gallon for the trip. We had a great time and really enjoyed the trip.
The town of Chesterfield, Idaho holds their celebration each year on Memorial Day. The town doesn’t really exist anymore — I’ve some pictures that I’ll put in in a few days that’ll tell some of the story — but mother, Eileen, Nina, and I went over to Chesterfield for a few hours this morning. The Holbrook Store closed its doors in 1955 and is now being renovated. As we came up on the store and the gas pumps standing outside, mother remarked that there was indeed something in Chesterfield older than she was…. They even matched in color!
Addendum: My brother pointed out that I had mis-named the place we went on Monday — twice — and got it right once. We were in Chesterfield, Idaho. For many years we lived in a neighboring township to Chesterland, Ohio and I’ll plead a fatigued brain for the slip. I’ve corrected the place name!
Strasburg, Colorado
We made it quite a bit further than we had thought. Driving from Jim’s to Kansas City was on two, three, and sometimes four lane roads with stoplights and small towns to go through. When we were established on I-70 I did a quick calculation to find that we had averaged 56 miles per hour. A few hours later I checked again and we were averaging 61 miles per hour. We also gained an hour back when we crossed into Mountain Daylight Time around mile marker 36 in Kansas. We’re now in a very nice KOA campground near Denver. There is free wifi here and we’re both sitting at the table with computers open and busy. I’m writing in my blog, Nina is sending out some e-mail. It’s quarter past eight and we’ll figure out something to eat from the fridge/freezer in a few minutes. This has been our longest driving day of the trip.
And what a driving day it was. Shortly past Topeka the winds picked up from the south. Big, gusty winds that blew trucks and motorhomes around on the freeway. That made for active driving so we changed drivers more often so we wouldn’t be so tired. After a sketchy night’s sleep last night and a hard driving day today, we’ll both crash tonight. But — we’re in a good campground. The air conditioning is on. We’ve got hot water. It’s quiet. We’re not bouncing all over the freeway….
Nina asked me what were some of the memorable sights from the trip. My answer was “trees.” Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and across Kentucky literally all we could see from the roadway were trees. As we’ve come west today we went from trees everywhere to trees nowhere. We left rolling hills with lush greenery in Missouri to dry high plains in Colorado. The contrast is pretty stark. Tomorrow we’ll be in Soda Springs. Hurrah!
Kansas City, Here We Come
Today is another long driving day. We left Jim’s place in Springfield, Missouri about 7:30 a.m. this morning and are now about ten minutes from the beltway around Kansas City. We’ll be in Kansas in about twenty minutes headed ever westward. We have reservations at a campground just inside Colorado. It takes about nine hours to drive across Kansas so we should be at the campground about 7:30 p.m. MDT tonight. A drive equally as long tomorrow will put us in Soda Springs on Sunday Night. My brother Perry is driving over from Green River on Sunday afternoon and my sister Eileen is coming up from Sandy for a couple of days. We should have a fun visit. We’ll continue on home on Monday afternoon.
We had a nice but brief visit with Jim, LeeAnn, and family. We arrived about 6:30 p.m. on Thursday evening and parked in their driveway. After a quick bite, we joined Jim and the boys at the Cub Scout Pack Meeting. Jim’s new church calling is the Cub Master in the ward. After a fun-filled event we went back to Jim’s house and visited. Friday morning he went to work and we just did stuff around the house. I took the motorhome to fill it up with propane and Nina did a little grocery shopping. In the afternoon we went to a Civil War battlefield Wilson Creek and did a driving tour. Later that evening LeeAnn discovered that the kids had all picked up a good many little companions — tiny red ticks. After getting the kids de-ticked, having a lovely taco soup for dinner, Jim and I tackled another small task. His house, which is a very nice house, has all two-prong electrical outlets. We swapped a few of them for three-pronged outlets. They have a problem with the wind driving water under the garage doors and flooding the garage. We scoped out a couple of options to fix that at Home Depot. And that ended the day.
It was oppressively hot in Springfield yesterday and last night. I fired up the generator for a while so we could run the air conditioner and cool off the motorhome. The generator is too noisey to let run the whole night, so we sweated the night. Next time we’ll park in a campground where we’ll have 30 amp service.
Nina is driving and I’m at my computer table. We’ll run out of SprintPCS connection in a little while so this might be the last post on this blog until we get to Denver sometime Sunday morning. Kansas City is well behind us….
Visiting In Springfield
We’re visiting a civil war battlefield south of Springfield, Missouri. It is dang hot. The car’s thermometer says 88 degrees which isn’t by itself too bad, but coupled with near 90% humidity, it is nearly oppressive. We’re having fun with the grandkids. Next stop is Barnes&Noble bookstore where there is air conditioning and cool drinks. That should be a good stop!
Lexington Horse Park State Park
This has to be one of the nicest State Parks I’ve every stayed in. The park is just a few minutes north of Lexington on I-75 and it is just beautiful. The camp sites are spacious and it is very comfortable. We arrived here about 7:30 p.m. EDT this evening and have been trying to figure out how we could stay here a bit longer! I’ve been working on my pictures from Monday. I didn’t realize I had taken so many. They are now all resized and ready to be uploaded — but they’ll need to be put in a couple of topics. That won’t happen tonight, for sure.
We pulled out of the campground near West Chester at 7:25 a.m. this morning. We’ve drove up to the Pennsylvania turnpike and have been on expressways or freeways the rest of the day. West to I-81, south into Maryland, west on I-70 then I-68 into West Virginia. Then south in I-79 to Charleston connecting to I-64 west. Twelve hours after starting we pulled into this campground. We’ll be out of here early in the morning. Right now I’m outside at the picnic table while Nina is inside watching the finale of The American Idol. That program will be over in a few minutes and we’ll be off to bed for the night. Tomorrow we’ll be in Jim’s driveway in Springfield, Missouri.