Travels with Serendipity: The Modern Day Prairie Schooner

Sailing Across the Plains... Following the Santa Fe Trail

First of all.... don't expect to hear from us daily. I'd spend far too much time writing and not enough time seeing all of this wonderful country I want to see.

That being said, our first "real" day out went off without any further breakdowns. We are still on the up side of the learning curve, though when it comes to trailer travel. Larry went out for a bike ride this morning while I contemplated where we'd stop for the night, and, after altering our route a bit because I had discovered if we took US 56 out of Dodge City we could take in Ft. Larned National Historic Site, booked us into Topeka, Kansas. Now I should admonish any friends who expect us to stay on tack and stay on schedule. We have never been masters of that particular art because we always seem to find something to distract us just a few miles off course and that takes half a day to see the way it should be seen. Or worse, sends us off on a new tack, like a sailboat on the plains.

By the time we took off from the Lamar campground it was after 10 and we found that traveling with a trailer slows you down. First it's just more comfortable for our truck to travel at 60-65 and secondly it is way more fuel efficient. With a truck that gets 9-12 mpg with a trailer in tow, that's important! So we found ourselves driving into Dodge City after 2 pm. Not good if we wanted to see Boot Hill (2 hrs or so) then drive on up to Ft. Larned National Historic Site which closes at 4:30.

So far RV Park people are wonderful! The Dodge City Gunsmoke RV Park people graciously took us in a day late and the Topeka RV Park people agreed to postpone our arrival a day without a penalty. I plead newbie and dumb, I'll admit, but to some degree I am both. I will be much less ambitious on our next leg of the journey... which should be Wichita. Unless I find someplace else to set a tack for.

Oh and by the way, we found some sealant that worked to stop our water leak so we are back in operation .... showers tonight, hooray!