The Wandering Goose :: vol 4 :: Limon KOA

Day 1 of our Kansas to Washington trip! 
I'm not even going to preface this post and just start out with.....

Chapter 1 : The Planning
We have been planning this trip to drive out to Washington for the summer, for what seems like forever!  When I finally broke down and created countdown chains for the kids, we were around 96 days. This trip has been in the making for a really long time, with lots of details getting worked out along the way.   I started out planning on driving and tent camping with the kids.  Then Royal finally broke down and bought me a trailer I’d been begging for, for like the last 3 years!  Then we started planning who was going to be my driving buddy, and my dad decided he’d fly out and help me drive, since he is our expert trailer driver and backer-upper, I knew he could be extremely valuable!   Then we started planning the route.  Where did we want to go?  What did we want to see?  How long did we want to take?  When did we want to get to WA by?   How far did we want to drive everyday?   My dad and I talked on the phone a few times and shared things we wanted to do, but finally on Friday night, the day after my dad had flown into Wichita, we stayed up until midnight, “finalizing” our route.   “Finalizing” because we wanted to be flexible when it came to how much the kids could handle being in the car.  We had no reason to push and drive super far and make it difficult on the kids.  We wanted to make this trip fun, but also make it so we could get to Washington pretty quickly, because let’s face it, as excited as I am to go to Yellowstone again, Jayden and Willow are a bazillion times more excited to see their cousins.  My dad and I made a conservative route, not really knowing how far the kids could make it, then Royal came downstairs and poo-poo’d our route, so we started over and created a different route, that basically had us driving really far on the first day, like probably 9-10 hours – we figured we could get away with more if the kids weren’t already sick of riding in the car – and then less distances the days after that.   So, we printed out maps and directions and packed dad’s GPS, and set a “launch time” of 6am on Monday morning.

Chapter 2 : The Beginning
For once, I actually got everything packed and loaded on time!  I got myself up at 4:30 to enjoy one last good shower, then finished packing, woke the kids up, got them dressed, and we were pulling out of the driveway by 6:04.  It was practically a miracle.  The kids were tired and excited and hungry and slightly cranky.  They hated the banana muffins I had made for breakfast, my super awesome (IMO) car seat pillows were “stupid”, and Jayden’s brand new red marker was already dry and he was trying to color spider man.  Willow obviously got tired of coloring her book, because she created “beautiful tattoos” on herself.

Willow then proceeded to need to use the bathroom at least every hour, she was once again excited to be using the trailer toilet again, so there were a lot of stops and starts. But, we learned a trick about Royal’s truck thanks to these stops! About 15 minutes down the road, the A/C went out in half of the truck again.   I laughed, apologized to dad, and tried to lean myself in a way that the cool air from my vents would bounce off of me and give dad a cool draft in the midst of his heaters.  But we discovered that once we turned the truck off, and then started it again, the A/C worked in all the vents.  And as long as we didn’t turn the A/C off, it would keep working!  And since it was 81 degrees at 6am, it really wasn’t a problem to keep it on.   I just stopped being so nice to the kids and when they were complaining about being cold, I just told them to shove it and cover up with a blanket!   Ok, so not the first part, but blankets, yes!

Chapter 3 : The Wandering
My friend Danielle posted a Life is Good picture on my facebook timeline right before we left.

Turns out, sometimes those that wander really are lost.  Especially in the case of my dad and I.  And I am going to get in a LOT of trouble from my dad when he reads this, because he told me I couldn’t tell anybody what we did, but oh my gosh, how can I not post it???   It is so typical of my adventures!  So, my dad and I are both VERY directionally challenged.  At a stop sign, if we guess to go left, 90% of the time, we should of gone right.  If Royal asks my opinion on directions (rarely ever happens), he always goes the opposite way.  It’s just the way it works.   That’s why I printed out maps and directions and had dad bring his GPS, because mine is on the fritz and randomly turns itself off and refuses to turn back on, which could really spell disaster in my world.  Today, we had pretty darn simple directions.  North on I-135, then West on I-70.   I don’t know what the freak happened.  In the chaos of the morning, I got mad at the GPS because it wasn’t showing what I wanted it to, so I shut it off because, well, we knew where we were going.  And then I was turned around backwards in the car most of the time trying to appease my crazies back there and was totally neglecting my navigator duties and we somehow missed the I-70 interchange.  How in the world do you miss a major interstate, I don’t know, but we did!   Laughing, pretty much hysterically (then then laughing about it for hours afterwards), and my dad swearing he’d kill me if I posted this on my blog, I turned on the GPS and discovered we could still get to our day 1 destination of Brighton, CO, we’d just have to take the scenic route that pretty much followed I-70, just further north along the state, and it didn’t really add any time to our trip.  So, onward we went and into Colorado!

I think it's hilarious how this sign says, "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" while sitting in the middle of a brown field....

Chapter 4 : The Drama
As far as I was concerned, our first day was going swimmingly well.  Other than the slightly more frequent than I’d like bathroom stops, we were making good time, and figured we’d be done driving around 3:00/3:30ish.  Then it happened.   The drama that seems to follow us on all our wanderings.  At least it makes for some good blog material!  We were cruising along our scenic, mostly isolated route, just passing through a tiny town called Cope, and dad makes some joke about, "Hey!  You think we can cope with this trip??? ha ha ha" 15 miles or so later, dad says, “I have no power”.  What the?  He manages to pull us off on the side of the road.   The truck had died.  Weird.  He starts it right back up.   So, we pull onto the road and get up to about 15 mph and the truck tries to shift gears, but instead loses power and dies.  Dad, again with no power steering gets us off the road.  I call Royal, he suggests trying manual shifting to see if that works.  Nope.  And now the check engine light is on.  We pull over on a tiny little shoulder, but are at least off the road, put on our flashers, and I call AAA.

Did I mention it’s 108 outside? Not exactly fun to be sitting in on the side of the road in a tin can trailer!  But at least we had food, water, and a place to stretch out and not be cramped in the truck.  And poor Sam was in the back of the truck this whole time, so we were able to get him out and in the trailer too.  Did I also mention how grateful I was that we were not on the main interstate with cars zooming all around us?  Praise the Lord!  We obviously were led to the “scenic” route.  I guess our wandering wasn’t really lost after all.  So, once we called AAA, and they finally figure out where we were and found a tow truck that could haul all of us and our equipment, we had about an hour to wait until they got there. So, we sat in the trailer and watched the farmers combine the field we were parked next too.

 We were literally in the middle of no where.  We sprayed ourselves down with misting fans and tried to drink tons of water and ate snacks.  Did I mention it was 108?  That shower I’d gotten up so early to take was TOTALLY ruined!  Oh I already mentioned how hot it was?  So, sorry….  The kids picked a movie to watch while we waited for the tow truck.  Guess they were hoping it would help with the heat, as they chose a Christmas movie

 Finally the tow truck arrives.

AAA will pay for 100 miles of towing, but then after that we have to pay the rest.  From where we were, Brighton was only 106 miles away, so we were pretty pumped.  We might have been broken down, but we were going to hit our first destination on the route!  We pile in the tow truck and head down the road, but have to pull over after a few miles so our driver could fix some wiring so the blinkers on the trailer would work.  While there, we learn that Hwy 36 – the one we were on – was closed 30 miles up the road, because a grass fire had caught a town on fire.  The town's name, no joke, was Last Chance.  Very fitting for our day.  So, instead of heading west, we had to turn around and head east. We then had to take this horrible, dirt, county road south, so we could get on I-70, the only thing we were passing was farm equipment.

 The dirt road took forever, it was bumpy, and we were driving like 60mph down it, pulling the trailer behind.  Needles to say, things inside the trailer were a bit shook up and the outside is filthy now!  Poor Sam, had to ride in his crate in the back of Royal's truck up on top of the bed of the tow truck.  I thought for sure he'd be having an anxiety attack back there, but he really managed really well, even in the horrible heat.  By the time we finally popped out on I-70, we still had like 100 miles to Brighton.  And since I didn’t want to pay for that tow, we asked Mike, the driver, where the heck we were and if there was any place nearby that could fix the truck and had a place to stay.  Mike says, “Well, we’re about 15 miles away from Limon”  Hmmm, Limon, that sounded familiar.   Oh wait! When dad and I had made our conservative route on Friday night, we originally had Limon as our first stop.  Which meant, in my pack of directions and maps and campgrounds, I had an RV park listed in Limon with an address and telephone number.   God is so good!   Not only did He put us on a road without fast cars passing us when our truck decided to stop working, but our broken down truck also stopped us from driving right into a burning town and having to turn around and backtrack who knows how long before we figured out where we were going, and then He brought us to a town where I already had the info for a place to stay.  Hallelujia!  Blessed are those who dwell in your house! (Ps 84:4)
The kids really did better than expected.  They didn't complain much and handled being in the car for 12 hours very well.  Part of it might of had to do with actually getting to ride in a tow truck!
Check out Royal's truck behind my head!

Chapter 5 : The Campsite
Limon has a KOA that we are staying at.  Thankfully, they had an open site for us and while it’s dirty and dusty and near I-70, it’s also within walking distance of where the truck is being worked on and it has a pool.   We were all so over heated and hungry and tired when we got here, so I just made a quick dinner, put suits on the kids, and we went swimming.  I totally needed another shower, thanks to our hot sauna stop on the side of the road, but I figured a dip in the pool was better than nothing and I can use soap on another day. We are camping after all!  Hopefully that day doesn’t involved sitting along side a road in 108 temperatures.  Once we got back to the trailer, I jammied up the kids and put them to bed.  Willow was asleep so fast, I could hardly believe it, she ony got up twice to go to the bathroom and once for a drink of water.  Jayden struggled a bit because of how hot the trailer was, but after wetting down his hair and giving him a wet rag to sleep with he finally stayed put long enough for his body to fall alseep.  Our campsite is nothing special, but it has electricity and water and sewer, and our trailer is full of food, and we are safe, so I am gosh darn thankful!

Yay for Day1. Day 2 can’t get any worse, right????

Star Wars

The kids and I met up with some friends yesterday to check out the Star Wars exhibit that's going on at Exploration Place.

There were some pretty neat-o things to do in there.  I kinda want to go back without the kids so I can actually read the signs, and watch the videos, and build my own robots.  :)
This was a station where you could try and make a robot walk.  There were 4 little levers, 2 for each leg,  one that moved the leg up and down, and one that bent the knee, and you were suppose to figure out which order and how much to move each lever to get your robot legs to walk across the floor.  Jayden didn't really care about walking, so much as making the legs dance, jump, and do funny kicks.  It's what I would of done if one of the exhibit volunteers hadn't of come over and told us to be more "careful" with the robot.  Lame.  Fun-Killers!  :D

There were a few build your own robot stations.  The R2D2 one was pretty darn cool.  The programmer in me liked this one.  You built a robot and then you took it over to a station with a computer and an obstacle course.  You then decided on the computer how you wanted your robot to move through the course, by using direction arrows and how much time you wanted to move in that direction.  Once you wrote your program, you downloaded it into your robot and hit the Go button.  The robot then moved through the course the way you programmed it to.  It was pretty sweet.

There were of course lots of the characters from the movies and costumes on display.  But the kids were moving so fast through the darn exhibit, I hardly got to take pictures.
The wampa that tried to eat Luke.

And of course Darth.  I just call him Darth, because it's like we are on a first name basis.  Darth Vader is for people who don't have little Darths running around their house whacking their light sabers into everything and moving things with the force.

There was also a real life hovercraft that you could ride.  This was pretty much the kids' all time favorite thing.  The sign said no kids under 5 were allowed on it, but there was no way I was keeping Willow off that thing.  I had a plan to take out one of the exhibit volunteers if they decided they needed to say something about it.  It involved a light saber, the wampa, darth's helmet, and the millennium falcon.  Good thing it didn't come to that.

Art Dwellers :: Name Banner

Art Dwellers sent Willow an art package in the mail too.  She got a box full of stuff to make a flag banner with her name on it!

She started by picking a colored flag and a letter of her name.  The letters for her name aren't just plain white letters, they are glittery letters.  And if you know Willow, you know that Willow and sparkles go together!

Once all the letters were glued onto the flags, we glued the flags onto a long, skinny strip of fabric.

And then I tied smaller pieces of fabric strips in between each letter.
How cute is this????

How cute is she???? :)

Art Dwellers :: Music Art

Art Dwellers is an art business down in Friendswood, TX that asked my kids and I to try out a couple of their art projects!  Crafts?  In the mail?  With art supplies and instructions???  Yes, please!!!

Jayden got a box full of stuff to create some musical instruments.

First up, a tambourine.
Jayden started by using water colors to paint on some paper circles.

We then put dried black beans on a styrofoam plate, covered it with a second plate, and then tied strings through the pre-punched holes.

Jayden squirted glue all over the top of the plate and he put one of his painted circles on top of it, and then did the same thing on the other side.

Once the glue was dried, viola!  Tambourine!

Next up was a rain maker.
Jayden used a paper towel tube and glued colored paper all over the outside of it.

Then I rubberbanded a cupcake liner to one end and Jayden filled the tube with dried rice.

And I rubberbanded another cupcake liner to the other end and we had our rain maker!

Our kit also came with a music man mustache!

These are by far the best kid instruments in the house, they make noise, but are not super loud, so the kids can play them as much as they want without me wanting to throw them out the window!

The Wandering Goose :: vol 3 :: Osage Hills State Park

Well, we have had our second "successful" camping trip.  By successful, I just mean to say, the 4 of us left together with a trailer full of all kinds of stuff, and we all made it back alive, tired, and very dirty, with the majority of the stuff we left with.  Now, I have a funny feeling, there are a few of you out there who have been waiting to hear how our next camping trip went, after the, um, shall we just say, experiences of the last trip.  And after talking with Kaylee this past week, I said to her, "Well, if my blog starts out with 'Chapter 1', you'll have known there have been a few, um, let's just say, experiences."

So, let's get started shall we.

Chapter 1 :  The Truck
That's right, the truck.  We aren't even starting out with the drive this time.  On Friday, I go to the WSU campus to run stairs with some of my old MMF buddies.   Royal just happens to work on the WSU campus, so I drop the kids off with him for 45mins while I go make my legs feel like Jell-o, and then he brings them back to me.  Since we were all together, I suggested that I just take his truck home and that way I could get the dog's crate in the back and the DVD player set up.  He told me to go fill up the gas tank, so we didn't have to stop on the way there.  See folks, we learn from our mistakes.  :)  So, the children and I leave to go run a couple errands and then head home to finish loading the trailer, but first to the gas station.  I fill up the truck, jump in to head to our next stop, and the truck won't start.  It won't even turn over.  I call Royal.  He comes and declares it's just the battery and that he's probably going to have to replace it.  He jumps the battery and says, "Go right home"  But I argue, "I have a couple other things I have to pick up!"  Royal says, "Go straight home, no stopping.  It won't start again" "But, um, well, do you think I could just leave the kids in the truck and leave it running???"  Royal says, "Go HOME!"  Ok, fine.  Sheesh.  So, our trip started out with a 2 hour delay, as Royal came home from work and then proceeded to take the battery out of the truck and go find a new one and replace it.  At least he's handy!

Chapter 2 :  The Drive
This trip we decided to head down to Oklahoma, and I have to say, I kinda like Oklahoma better than Kansas, at least as far as scenery goes.  Greener (maybe it's just the time of year), hillier, treeier (pretty sure that's not a word), however, it was hotter and more humid.  blech.  The kids were excited and jumped right in the truck, and immediately started complaining they were too hot.  So, I flip on the A/C.  What the?  I feel hot air.  I check the controls.  Yup, all the way cold.  A/C button pushed in. What is the deal?  Oh, wait, I feel cold air.  I say, "Oh!  I think it's finally working"  Royal checks the vents and says, "Nope, it's not.  Guess we'll have to ride with the windows down"  So, he rolls down the window, and Jayden immediately yells from the back, "Too windy! Roll it up!  I'm hot!!!"  So, we turn back on the A/C and check the vents.  The two in front of me are blowing cold air.  The two in front of Royal are blowing hot air, like the controls flipped all the way up hot.  So, he positions those vents up and away from him and I turn my vents towards the backseat for the kids, and we spend the whole trip trying to decide if keeping the fan turned way up on high is better or worse than on low.  The harder the fan, the hotter the air that blew out at Royal, but at least we had cold air to combat it.  Royal pretty much sweated the whole way down and I laughed and sat in front of a cold air vent.

Chapter 3 :  The Campsite
We stayed at Osage Hills State Park, in site B.  We had water and 50AMP power.  And good thing, because it was so freaking hot, we had the A/C on pretty much the whole time!

There were lots of trees, lots of space in between the campsites.  It was nice!
We did some painting

and there was a playground right down the street that the kids rode their bikes to a bunch.

Chapter 4 :  Sleeping
Can't say sleeping got much better this trip.  Willow fell asleep right away, but she managed to roll out of her bed 3 times.  Guess we'll have to bring something to make a bumper for her next time, or put more padding on the floor.  :)  Jayden couldn't go to sleep.  It was hot, so we had the A/C on, but that was too noisy for him, so we turned it off.  The cicadas were REALLY loud, so were the crickets and frogs, and did I mention the screaming cicadas?  So, he couldn't sleep because of the noisy bugs, so we turned the A/C on to drown out the noise of the bugs, but then he was too cold.  It took forever for him to fall asleep.  Unfortunately, it didn't take forever for me to fall asleep, so poor Royal had to deal with the brunt of it.  :)  Happy Father's Day weekend, right???? :)


Chapter 5 : Hiking
I did something that I never do.  I bought really bad for you bug spray.  Like it had DEET in it and everything.  Royal insisted and said we weren't going hiking without it.  What's worse though, DEET or pulling some ticks off?  Royal insisted ticks were worse, and as I was spraying the kid's legs with poison in a can, Jayden kept asking what was it I was spraying them with.  Royal's response, "It's just better life through chemistry son, better life through chemistry"  So, off to the hiking trail we went!

Royal found a couple ticks on his legs and Sam and he pretty much gave up on hiking through the woods and walked on the road the rest of the way back.  Later on, Jayden found a tick on, hmmm, how do I put this delicately, on an area he refers to as his 'chicken tenders"..... guess even DEET doesn't solve all our problems.


Chapter 6 : Swimming
Osage Hills State Park also had a swimming pool!  It was some sweet relief after being so hot and sweaty.  We somehow got Willow down for a nap - the trick is to put her up on the top bunk where she can't get down and eventually she lays down and goes to sleep.  Jayden was a bit bored, but discovered a secret passage way.  There is a little laundry shoot right next to Royals side of the bed that drops down into the compartment underneath the trailer.  It kept him entertained for a good couple of hours!

Once Willow woke up, we loaded up on sunscreen and towels and bathing suits and headed to the pool for a couple hours.

Chapter 7 : Critters
There were a lot of creatures around the park. We saw deer right as we were driving in, and Royal was completely fascinated with this bird that was walking around upside down on the bottom of the branches of the tree.  One of Royal's coworkers and his family just happened to be staying at the park this weekend too, and they kept coming over to our trailer and showing us something that they caught.  Like a scorpion.  And then there was this...tarantula

I guess this park is known for the tarantulas.  Around Memorial Day, there is a tarantula migration and lots of people come to the park just to see this happen.  While totally creepy, it was kinda fun to get to see one in person!

Chapter 8 : Sand Creek
We went on a different hike today, down to Sand Creek where there are these little waterfalls, and thanks to the waterfalls, it keeps the water moving enough that it supposedly keeps the water moccasins away, at least we didn't see any!

Chapter 9 : The Dump
The flushing of the tanks this time was successful with no incident, in case you were worried.  :)  No poop rolling down the road this time!


1 week until we are loaded all up again and ready for our big haul out West for the summer!