Tamee and Jason – 6 wings and a prayer . . .

Actually, we are for a couple more hours – below is a compilation post from Wednesday and Thursday . . .

Corncob pipe dreams. . .

Laramie to Wichita (hey, there’s a country song in there somewhere) – It was in the low 30’s last night. We had toyed with the idea of utilizing the camper last night in an attempt to make this feel like a vacation rather than a drudgery – thank goodness we didn’t do it, we’d have frozen! There are some REALLY cool mountains just east of Laramie – they are sort of fairytale-ish, like big round boulders perched atop each other, looking both precarious and indestructible all at the same time. So that’s my nod to gorgeous scenery, the entire rest of the day has been one flat cornfield after another . . . oh, wait, don’t forget the bean fields, one after the other . . . . and the cattle ranches, one after the other . . . you get the idea. Much like day one, it’s all very beautiful, but enough already!

We’ve been in Kansas for a couple of hours now, with plans to make Wichita before dark, that should put us in a good position to roll on in to Nashville tomorrow, a day ahead of schedule. Two SUPER things about today, relative to Oregon/Idaho/Utah, fuel in Colorado and Kansas has been cheap, we just paid $3.59 for unleaded, and we could use every break we can get! The other marvelous thing . . . it’s been gorgeous all day, sunny, warm, perfect to have the windows down with the eclectic mid-Kansas oldies station on – a little Eddie Arnold and some Loretta Lynn. We’re soaking it up, because we’re skirting some wicked looking weather, according to the news, these are the storms that have been dumping massive weather on much of the Midwest – so not to be tangled with. We’re hoping to be bedded down in Topeka long before we meet up with the storms.

Beginnings of the storm

Into the eye of the storm . . .

Ooooookkkkkkkk – so THAT plan didn’t work out so good. I wrote the previous parts of that post just before we drove into the eye of swirling bowels of satan’s own little tea party. I didn’t get the pictures uploaded, I’m sorry, we were so exhausted by the time we got in, I couldn’t get my head around the wi-fi instructions so I’m writing this on Thursday morning from breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Just as we came into Russell we entered hard rain, hail, and driving wind. Jason found a station with the weather, actually, ALL of them were broadcasting the weather because we were entering a storm cell that was spawning tornados, hail, and 60 mph winds. The freaking out broadcasters were informing us of the constantly changing wind speed and the visible hook echo (we don’t know what it is either, but it’s VERY dramatic to hear on the radio when you’re about to wet your pants). We had to pull off and park under an overpass because of the hail – when that let up (the only good thing about a storm that’s moving 43 mph means it passes over a whole lot quicker than rain in Portland), we moved on to Russell.

Dissipating storm . . .

Just as we were entering Russell, they broadcast that a tornado was on the ground in Ellsworth, six miles ahead of us. It was moving NE, away from us, so dad kept driving. I’ve been in a tornado as a child, and a hurricane and an earthquake as an adult . . . I have to say, I’ve not really been more scared ever in my life. There was just no safe place to be – there’s NOTHING out here, no shelter, no place to go. We passed through Ellsworth, Kansas about four minutes behind the tornado. There wasn’t any evident damage from the highway, but the storm was still pretty intense. We heard this morning that the storm we came through leveled a boyscout camp, no one died, but if I was scared, I can’t imagine how a bunch of little boys on a camping trip must have felt.

We made Wichita by 9:30, bedded down at the luxurious Motel6 just in time for the municipal tornado alarm to go off. We were so tired, we just turned the fan up and went to sleep. We were still alive this morning, so our plan of denial just have protected us from harm.

Breakfast is here, so I’m going to down some coffee and nutrients. I’ll upload pictures from yesterday at our next stop – I got a couple of pretty impressive pictures as we were coming into the storm.

Best to all – we’re missing you like crazy, keep posting, it makes us laugh at every stop. Big love.