We woke up in Garden City, Kansas with the smell of feedlots/slaughterhouses in our noses... the stuff that makes Garden City famous. Or not.

I got a really shitty nights' sleep, unable to snooze until about 04:30; Karen got up about 08:30 and got a shower, and I slept in until 09:00 since I had showered before going to bed. Karen got dressed and went down to the lobby for free coffee and she brought me back a cup of hot chocolate and a cup of coffee. The hot chocolate was a sort of a peace offering.

We checked out and got the hell out of Dodge... uh... Garden, deciding to get breakfast at the next town. It was raining on us lightly, and would continue to do so all day.

We went through a few smaller towns, thinking that there would be a cafe open in at least one of them, but no go... the cafes were probably in places a traveler wouldn't find, anyway. We finally found a place to eat in Larned, but breakfast was way over by now, so we had lunch. We continued driving, this time with Karen at the wheel. She wanted to know what I'd been writing in the journal, so I read it to her as we were driving along in the rain.

Kansas has its' own special beauty, I think, especially this time of the year, even in the rain. For one thing, there's some Green in the landscape. And the part that's not absolutely flat is rolling hills, evidence of the mountains that once existed here. After all, in several millions of years, the grand canyon might look a lot like this.... Nah.

I've enjoyed keeping a written journal... this is something that I might continue to do even while I'm home. Right now, I don't really look forward to transcribing all of those entries, but I will. However, I'm not gonna hurry on it... I want to get the pix back, so I can correlate them. Altogether, we had a very good vacation, it did Karen and I a lot of good, individually and collectively, to get away from everything. Strange, I didn't really miss e-mail or all of the journal-reading that I normally do when I'm home. It was like, a real vacation, away from everything.

We got home about 16:30 and basically unpacked the car and put stuff up, then Karen ordered a pizza. While she was off picking it up, Steve called and brought the kids over. They were not really too happy to see me... "Where's Grandma? Where's Grandma?" I finally got my hugs and kisses after grandma brought the pizzas home and got hers... talk about feeling like a second-class citizen!

Todays' picture is not me doing a primal scream, but of me yawning. And with that, I'm off to bed...

Total trip mileage: 2, 932 miles. Good Cadillac!