Days 164-165 – 11/4-5/11 – Kansas Wind

Dodge City to Kinsley; Distance = 36 Miles; People Met = 9

Kansans seem to take a small amount of pride in how windy the plains are.  Up until this stretch I’ve been tempted to ask “What wind?” Granted, our first night camping out in Kansas featured “dust bowl” quality wind, and the storm we sat out a couple days ago had gusts up to 50 mph, but outside of that the Kansas plains have been relatively still.

In the morning Ky greeted us inside the First United Methodist Church with “You better wear your pants!” (We usually wear shorts).  Sure enough, that was good advice.  What made the wind more difficult was hiking along US 50, where speeding haulers going either direction created their own counter wind currents.  The overall effect at times was us stumbling along like drunken sailors, leaning this way and that in response to the changing wind gusts.

Before any Kansans take too much pride in reading this, a couple of sources already spilled the beans that the wind was abnormally high.  Regardless, the high winds punctuated the wisdom of locating a plethora of wind turbines around Spearville, our destination halfway through this stretch.  I’ve got to tell you, I think wind turbines are very scenic, but perhaps that is just in contrast to the barren plains.

Wind turbines by Spearville

Our first stop in Spearville was at the newspaper office.  I was surprised that a town the size of Spearville had a newspaper, but Bruce and Cindy are making their family operation work.  Bruce also was President of the Lions Club last year.  I did not know Spearville even had a Lions Club so I missed an opportunity there.

Cindy and Bruce of the Spearville News

Our final stop was the Presbyterian Church in town.  How we ended up here is a nice story.  The three of us were doing some grocery shopping when Ky spotted someone with a Kansas Department of Wildlife patch on.  She wrestles him to the ground … no, that’s not quite right.  She stops him in his tracks and asks about camping spots throughout the state.  Lowell was good natured about being accosted and, in fact, would have invited us into his home had he not been going to pick up his son on Friday, returning home from deployment.  Instead he set us up with the church he attends in Spearville.  We’ve since learned that he knew everyone we had dinner with at the Boltons, shown on my web site a few days ago.

We met Lowell again, and his wife Marty, on the road after Spearville

As we got settled in the church Britta came down with her two extremely cute little boys, Kordel and Brier.  Her whole family serves as custodians for the church.  That’s one thing we don’t get to see much of on this journey, little kids.  Both Cindy and I have a tendency to act like kids ourselves so we welcome the chance to interact with little folks on their level.  When Britta found herself parted from family at Thanksgiving in the past she would volunteer at Red Cross food lines.  No surprise, then, that she took an interest in our mission.  She also invited us to join her for potato soup on the morrow, but we have “promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep.”

Britta, Kordel and Brier

The next morning I called Pastor Lance from the Methodist Church in Dodge to get a recommendation for Kinsley.  He gave me the number of Pastor Dennis Kuder of the Methodist Church in Kinsley and I was able to make arrangements for the night.  Pastor Lance provided some information over the phone about New Mana, an initiative started in Kansas where people come together to package food to be sent to Haiti, Africa and other impoverished places.  He estimated there would be about 1,000 people gathering at the Dodge Civic Center, packaging for New Mana that day.  Pastor Lance also let me know he would be praying for us, since this day would be even windier than the first, surpassing 40 mph.

At one point hiking towards Kinsley I was reminded of Dr. Zhivago.  Seeing on the big screen the broad, open steppes of Russia was my first exposure to that type of landscape.  Granted, there was no snow around me, but I bet the wind was just as fierce!

Speaking of Russia, we saw plenty of “Russian thistles,” another name for invasive tumbleweeds because of their origins, blowing across the road.  At one point I felt like I was in a “Frogger” like video game trying to capture a shot of tumbleweed blowing by.  It’s not as easy as you might think.  You have to spot one before it gets to the road, by the time it reaches the road it’s too late to take the picture.  However, it might snag on vegetation just before reaching the road and then zoom across once it gets loose.  You also have to time it so one is not being run over by a passing vehicle.  I think I might have took one good shot.  Maybe I need hone my reflexes playing Frogger.

Unfortunately, my best tumbleweed shot

At day’s end we were in Kinsley, Kansas, a midway point for the country.  We won’t be midway day-wise until Thanksgiving.

Halfway! .... Or not