Photos now added
Lyons to McPherson; Distance = 31; People Met = 8
A few days ago a proud Kansan was beaming about how beautiful the Kansas skies were but up until then the skies were either boringly cloudless or depressingly stormy for us. Since Garden City we’ve had a string of partly cloudy skies. The first day hiking from Lyons to McPherson started out with gloomy, overcast skies and a November feel. As the overcast day transitioned to a mostly cloudy evening the sky provided one of our better sunsets in Kansas.
Sunset over McPherson
We started and ended that first day at Annette Karr’s house for breakfast and dinner, joined by her friend Lou in the evening. Annette shared a funny story about first a raccoon and then a possum invading her house and making themselves at home. We talked about the travesty known as health care, or I should say health insurance, and Ky mentioned two good ideas. One is to simply not pay health insurance. The charged costs of health care decrease dramatically when one is without health insurance. The other idea is to invest in health savings, preferably by diverting the money corporations otherwise want to place in a speculative compensation package for you which amounts to a corporate boondoggle.
The second day hiking into McPherson witnessed a return to cloudless skies. Speaking of sunny dispositions, that pretty much describes R. D. Johnson, a third generation Swede with a gift for gab. He stopped his tractor with what looked to be a bush hog with clear intent to engage us in conversation. He worked at construction for the third time in his life, this time coming out of retirement somewhere near his eighties. We found out about his affliction that removed all his hair by the time he was 26; his daughter the adventurer who works for HP; his other daughter with an inventive husband designing a means to extract every bit of crab meat from the shell; and his trips to San Francisco, Alaska and Sweden.
R. D. Johnson, sans hair
Annette was teaching a chakra class at the Congregational Church whose floor we slept on for several nights. She brought some of her students down to meet us before saying our final good-byes.
Kathy, Kendra and Annette (and Wink)
Other Photos
They do take pride in their mailboxes in the plains
Hay Bird
McPherson colors
I'd go for the unleaded plus
