Adventures in Kansas

I'm sure Kansas is a lovely place, but it still isn't where I would want to be stranded in a blizzard. Incidentally, had this blizzard hit almost precisely three years earlier, give or take a week, I would have been so stranded.

That is because three years ago, TS found a used truck cap he liked in Boulder, Colorado, and because I am always ready for a road trip to pretty much anywhere, I agreed to go fetch it for him. And Colorado was too good an idea to pass up. So I called my sister, the only other person in the world I knew who'd be willing to drive four days through the Great Plains for the pleasure of spending exactly half a day in Rocky Mountain National Park.

We packed up the truck with our belongings and the two-month old Trailhead Kid, and set off. We hit snow by Effingham, Illinois. We ate there at a T.G.I. Friday's, and Full Moon called a friend of hers who lives in New York City for the sheer joy of letting her know that she was in a place called Effingham, Illinois.

We spent the next day traversing Missouri, which seemed to me to have a very high concentration of billboards advertising both Jesus and porn, and usually within very close proximity. Then we arrived in Kansas and lodged at a no-tell motel bearing a prominent banner with the message "Welcome Hunters!"

Even though we are vegetarians, and not hunters, they let us stay there anyway. But we didn't need the flier they placed in our room asking us to please refrain from dumping pheasant innards in the hotel trash cans and pleading with us to clean our kills in the parking lot and not in the bathroom.

I thought this was kind of unreasonable for an establishment claiming dedication to the well-being and happiness of hunters. But as a vegetarian and not a hunter, I felt little standing to complain.

We ate lunch at one of those godawful all-you-can-eat buffets in Russell, Kansas, which is where we would have been obliged to remain had this blizzard decided to hit three years earlier than it did. In addition to hosting us for lunch, Russell bears the distinction of being the hometown of both Bob Dole and Arlen Specter. Which -- in addition to the lunch -- probably reason enough not to be stranded in Russell for too long.

But we made it to Boulder, had dinner with an old friend who was also a newly minted priest, and spent the following day in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Not a bad trip, and we got a truck cap out of it too.