Dust in the Wind

 For those of you who’ve been wondering, good news – we’re underweight!  Whee, room for more wine. 

The Coliseum at MO State Fairgrounds in Sedalia

To back up a bit – we packed up Thursday morning, dumped uneventfully (I promise I’ll stop talking about it soon), pulled out and headed for the nearest parking lot to hook up Toad.  Both vehicles need to be pretty level and even to successfully hook up so the parking lot looked like a good choice.  It happened to be that time of day when seminars were ending and people were moving from building to building so we had lots of room for our audience.  Yes, people like to watch.  They tend not to comment unless you ask for help or they see something dangerous, but they do watch.  We struggled quite a bit with the connector that keeps Toad’s turn signals and brake lights lighting when Chuck’s do.  Don’t tell the Kansas State Patrol that we still don’t have anything on the left side of Toad.  The tow bar hooked up pretty easily and with Robin checking to make sure all was OK, I slowly pulled Chuck forward.  Watching in the mirror, I saw her making the “slash the throat” motion, meaning stop!  I got out to look, and realized we had a problem – the tow bars were cockeyed and not pulling evenly.  By now we were 20 minutes from our weighing appointment and feeling a bit pressured for time and despondent about our on-going challenges.  Luckily a member of the audience recognized our problem, helped us fix it, gave us some tips to avoid future problems and we made it to the weighing area on time. 

 

Following the weighing, we now know that we have ample carrying capacity, we’re fairly evenly loaded and our tires are properly inflated.  Without further ado, we left Sedalia and headed west to Emporia, KS.  The route was pretty straightforward and it gave us a chance to test out the navigation systems on board.  Yes-systems.  We have our old Garmin Nuvii GPS,  fondly called Jill.  We added a highly recommended iPad app called Co-Pilot that remembers the specs on Chuck and routes us away from low bridges and bad tunnels.  The Co-Pilot’s male voice is named John.  Robin’s new smart phone has a navigation app that we’ve named Kim.  And finally we have that old standby – an atlas, read by the navigator.  At times Robin was arguing with Jill, John and Kim simultaneously.  We did agree that having an odd number of devices was a good thing – majority rules when there are discrepancies!

Dust in the Wind

The RV park in Emporia was a little gritty – basic gravel sites, everything a little tattered looking and located alongside a noisy freeway.  It served our purpose but we were ready to move on today.   As we hit Hwy. 50 highway, Robin cued up the music.  Can you guess……yes, Dust In The Wind by Kansas. Nothing like a little mood music.  Jill, John and Kim were all on board, frequently disagreeing but we persevered.  We rolled into the Dodge City this afternoon and parked ourselves at the Gunsmoke RV Park in Dodge City, Kansas.  It’s a much nicer park and in a town with some tourist appeal.  Best of all, thanks to Robin’s Trip Advisor research, we found a great Vietnamese restaurant for dinner.  We’re feeling prettycomfy and may just stay 2 nights do the Gunsmoke/Boot Hill tourist stuff tomorrow.  

The sign in Chuck's bathroom.

More soon.