The Travels of the Agnew Family

This morning we continued driving west from Garden City, Kansas. First stop was to look at some ruts. Well, not just any old ruts but ruts made by the wagon trains travelling the Santa Fe Trail. The ruts aren’t very visible, at least to my eyes, but the trail is a significant part of the history of this area.

First stop in Colorado was the Welcome Center in Lamar. The volunteer manning the center was very help and told us about a couple of interesting things to see in Lamar like the oldest building in the world. Yup, according to Ripley’s Believe It or Not the building is 175,000,000 years old --- well at least the part of the building is built from petrified wood.



We saw some interesting things during our drive today ---a dust devil, a crop duster in action, an old school house, lots of flat fields and this.


Not sure what a zebra was doing a farm in Colorado.

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site is a reconstructed private fort built by Charles and William Bent and their partner Ceran St. Vrain on the north bank of the Arkansas River, the boundary between the United States and Mexico, in 1883. They traded with trappers, native tribes and settlers travelling the Santa Fe Trail.








No fuel available here today.


Set up and relaxing at the campground. The sun didn’t co-operate and left some spots on the photo.


A better photo of our truck and tent. Tonight is the first night we are sleeping in the truck. So far I’m enjoying the camping experience, but we’ll see when it's the middle of the night and the temperature goes down to 40 F (about 6 C) and I have to get up to use the facilities.


The view from the campground.

This morning we said our good-byes and continued our drive towards Colorado. We followed Bob's suggestion and drove highway 400 through Kansas. What a nice road. Part of the time it was a 4 lane divided highway but most of the time it was just 2 lanes. The surface is in good shape and the shoulders are wide and best of all there wasn't a lot of traffic.

I always think of Kansas as being flat but most of what we drove through today cannot be called flat. There were lots of trees and hills (small hills but they're still hills!)


Metal sculptures in a field. We saw several different spots with metal sculptures.


Now this is a sure fire way to get your fabric shop noticed.

We almost made it across the Kansas but decided to stop for the night in Garden City.

Bob and Jean have a beautiful home. The backyard drops down to a gully and is full of beautiful dogwoods, oaks and a number of other trees. Bird feeders and a bird water station can be found on their deck. We spent several hours sitting in the screen porch visiting and watching the birds.


The photos are a little soft as Ed shot through a screen door.





For lunch, we went to the Wooden Spoon, a lovely Mennonite restaurant about a half an hour from Bella Vista in Gentry Arkansas. The restaurant is housed in what was originally a horse barn. The barn, built prior to 1870, was in central Michigan. The barn was dismantled and moved to Arkansas. The beams were scrubbed and re erected exactly as they came down.


Bob and Jean on the front porch of the Wood Spoon.

I took the first shift of driving today (I usually get the first shift as I'm the morning person) and was not looking forward to driving through St. Louis on a Monday morning. Then I remembered it was Memorial Day ---- a holiday so, yeah!!!! no rush hour.


Ed is always telling me to take photos when we are driving but I don't like doing it as I don't get good photos. Ed on the other hand manages to get pretty good shots while the vehicle is moving. This is the St. Louis Arch.


You don't see this site every day. It took a minute to realize that the tanks and other military vehicles were being transported on a train.

This afternoon we arrived at Bob and Jean's home in Bella Vista Arkansas. We met Bob and Jean in Texas in 2006. It's great to see them again.

On the weekend, someone asked me if we were leaving at the "crack of dawn". I answered, we're leaving at Ed's "crack of dawn" --- 8 am, well today it was 8:10. Ed is not a morning person so being on coherent and on the road just after 8 am is pretty impressive.

Today's drive went well. The border was a piece of cake, there were only 4 cars in front of us car. The boarder guard asked us where we were going then instead of asking questions he told us places to visit in Colorado.

After 1000 plus km and 11 hours on the road we arrived in Effingham Illinois.

We've been home for three months so it's time for another trip. This time we're doing something a little different ---- we're camping out of the pickup truck. (crossing my fingers that it'll go according to plan. Then again there's always motels). We also have not booked accommodations so we can wander at will. It's been a few years since we've done a trip with no set itinerary.

Now you ask, it's nice that you're going camping but where is this camping happening? Colorado is where. It is a state that we have just touched on. We spend a night in Colorado Springs back into 2010 then drove south to New Mexico. This year we are hoping to see the southern half of the state of Colorado. It's a fair size state and there is a lot to see. We'll be starting with sand dunes and old Anasazi (ancient native Americans) dwellings, then we'll head into the mountains.

We are leaving tomorrow morning and hope to drive about a 1,000 km to Effingham Illinois.

No, we are not getting a puppy but I couldn't resist posting a photo of Amy (a friends dog) and some of her puppies.