Continuing on forThe Ride Home – Part 1
The next day had us driving up to Cottonwood Falls and the Tallgrass Prairie reserve. We of course stopped for Kansas BBQ for lunch. Previously I had read the book PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon
As one of my favorite authors he has written a few books on travelling in small town USA. In this one he explored Chase County Kansas, splitting it into a 3×3 grid and going in depth into the history and landscape of each section. What most intrigued me was the Tallgrass prairie and the push to turn this into a national reserve. We took a walk in the prairie and saw the Bison herd. My time here was too short, someday I would like to return and give it a deeper look much like William did.
We stayed at the Chase County Fishing Lake, a small lake stocked with fish surround by about 10 free camp sites, a really nice place to stay for the night. These fishing lakes seem to dot Kansas all over and all seem to all have around 10 free campsites, pretty cool.
The next day stopped for our third lunch at JWs BBQ in Atchinson, which was our favorite of them all, stop there if you get a chance. To work off the big lunch we stopped and washed the RV before we got into the cold of Minnesota. We then crisscrossed the Missouri River between Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, it was sad to still see the affects of the flood from this spring, lots of damaged houses and drowned farmland still underwater. We stayed the night at Indian Caves state park. This was a beautiful park, on bluffs overlooking the Missouri river. We of course had the campground to ourselves.
I had a great 10 mile hike in the morning through the woods and hills of Indian Cave, while Charissa had a lazy morning. We then drove to Onowa Iowa to visit my cousin Pat and his wife Kelly and their girls. We have a good time visiting with them, catching up on their life and making friends with their girls. They have a nice place there and are doing quite well.
In the morning Pat and Kelly showed us around a bit. Bringing us to a view of the Missouri River and brining us to his favorite views from the Loess Hils. The Loess hills are a unique area of windblown silt forming some nice bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, this area is not like the rest of Iowa I am used to. We then continued north to Sioux Center, the area my father grew up. We parked the RV overnight at my grandparents old farm place where Uncle Kent and Aunt Nancy still live. We sat and chatted with them for hours just catching up, in the evening we had dinner with the rest of the cousins and Aunts and Uncles. The time was too short, but it was good to see them all and briefly catch up.
We had decided to do the last push to Embarrass in one day, 7.5 hours by google maps. We got up early for breakfast with Kent and Nancy but got chatting with them and stayed back an extra hour leaving at 8:30. We stopped in Sheldon Iowa at a city park to empty our tanks, that and winterising the RV took an hour, then it took another 30 minutes to get us unstuck as the inch of snow and a small hill was nearly too much for the old RV. So we got back on the road at 10. The drive was fairly uneventful and we arrived at Embarrass at about 6pm. We beat the 6 inches of snow that arrived at 11 that night. It was good to be home.
That wraps up our road trip, we did about 10,500 miles. It was a pretty amazing trip, we were lucky to be able to do this. It was inspiring to see how huge and unpopulated the western US was and also how beautiful and varied it was. We are excited to explore more of the rest of the US. But next step is Christmas in Amsterdam and then the journey continues in Chile.
