Diary for Harry and Judy's RV Trip


Day 70-Getting the ____out of Dodge

2011-06-25

Left Dodge City about 9:30 this morning and drove 199 miles in 4-1/4 hours today to South Haven, KS, south of Wichita and four miles north of the OK border.  Travelled a bit on the Kansas Parkway which is the first toll road we've gone on this trip.  Very hot again, 102 at 2PM when we stopped.  Air conditioner is acting funny and Harry's getting worried.  I tend to put my head in the sand and hope for the best, the best being there's nothing wrong with it, it's just too darn hot to keep up and it'll get cooler soon.

Campgrounds in Kansas and Oklahoma are few and far between so we stopped early instead of going through Tulsa to our next stop in Arkansas (an additional 300 miles), which is really too far to do in one day.  There's no campgrounds between here and there.

We took route 400 through Kansas and the wheat and corn fields were joined by a few farms and ranches and alfalfa farms but mostly just grasslands. Some oil rigs and a few wind generators, but not as many as I thought would be here with all the wind. Passed though little towns (one called Pretty Prairie, such a nice name), each with a sign for a storm shelter, some homes with earth build up on the sides, I guess for tornado shelters.  The cattle carriers on the road were replaced by hay trucks and the cattle "feeder" farms were replaced with cattle grazing (much nicer).

HOT! HOT! HOT! here, and VERY windy.  The RV is rattling with the wind but it feels good even though it's a hot wind. We've got the door and windows open in the RV, tonight we'll try the AC again after it cools down a bit.  Haven't seen Dorothy, Toto or Auntie Em but I know how the wicked witch felt when she melted. No shade here either but, then again, it's the Kansas plains.

UPDATE-It's 9:30PM and life is better.  The sun went down although we just came in from outside and it was light enough to read, but it got cooler and the wind died down a bit. I actually watched the thermometer outside go from 110 at 7PM to 94 now.  And the AC works.  We tried it again so we could eat dinner (it was 100 inside the RV) and now everything is nice and cool.  Hopefully it was just too hot for the AC to keep up today. And we saw a deer in the field and a beautiful sunset.

Going to take yet another cold shower now and go to sleep early so we can leave early tomorrow, we have a long way to go before we hit another campground in Arkansas.