Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Day 90 - Washing in Wichita / Weather Considerations / Something's Burning / Army Corp of Engineers Camping


As of Yesterday I had been living in my car for a week, since leaving Monterey, Cslifornia,  It was time for laundry today and not only my clothing.

I have a flannel twin-size sheet that is sewed at the bottom and up one side knee-height on the open side when folded in half.

I place the sheet inside the sleeping bag with the open side of the sheet on the zipper side of sleeping bag and I wash this an the pillowcase each week as well, but it was time for a sleepingbag washing after all this time.

I had planned to drive north of Wichita, Kansas towards Kansas City, MO but didn't have a destination specifically picked out.

Stopping to write my blog took almost two hours.  This 2 hours along with another hour and a half doing laundry in the laundromat ate up a good chunk of my travel time today.

Every laundromat has been different.  I have used RFID cards, credit cards, and coins.  Today was coins $2.25 for my laundry to wash and $6.00 for the sleepingbag.  For drying it was $.25 for 10 minutes.

The lone guy in a laundromat full of woman, including the attendant.  I got lots of smiles and a brief pleasant tutorial from the woman attendant.  She checked to make sure that my settings were good and that I put in everything I wanted to before pushing start on the big front loader.  It reminded me of the Spanish speaking woman I would see every week in Tucson doing my laundry.  I guess a make is a commodity in laundromats.

Just before getting into Wichita the flat land turned to so slightly rolling hills.  It stayed this way for my travels to Burlington, Kansas tonight.

I have stayed off interstates after leaving Havasu, AZ last Wednesday am except for the trip down I25 from Colorado into Raton, New Mexico.  It's my goal to stay off interstates until I drive home on May 1 from son Brent's house in Maryland.  

It is so nice to see rural America this way.

I am working my way towards Chicago to visit a relative this weekend who I visited last year about the same time. 

She doesn't get to see family very much and it is a great time to catch up as she doesn't have a computer or is she connected to the Internet so I can show her my travels and family pictures when I get there.

(Wednesday at 5:00 pm)

I follow the weather as I travel and will check out the future surface maps out 24 and 48 hours.  I may have pushed into Missouri but they have had showers today.  For me it has been cloudy today except for the brief sun this am.

 (Thursday at 8:00 pm)

I have a weather front moving into Kansas and I have the weak disturbance in front of me.  It looks like I can go north through Iowa as the rain east of me slides south.    

I should be all set to stay in eastern Iowa tomorrow (Thursday) night befor arriving in Illinois on Friday pm.

It will be nice weather on Saturday and Sunday the front from the west will bring some showers through Monday.

As I left Wichita and headed northeast I ran into what I first thought was fog, but I soon smelled brush fire.  Every spring many farmers burn off their fields.  This has been of issue of late for health reasons and fires that get away from the people that start them.  In Massachusetts any fire that would be a nuisance for traffic or cause possible health problems would not be allowed.  


Fires are just left to burn unattended.  There were field after field that was blackened or burning.


There were miles of fields burned where I drove.



I arrived at my camping door for the evening.  I decided to try out The Army Corp of Engineers camping just north of Burlungton, KS.

The sign says the ranger will be by between 6:00 pm and 7:30 pm to collect the $15.00 to stay here.  As of 8:30 pm no one has shown up to collect so I'm turning in and I will see what happens.  There are no envelopes or Dropbox to leave payment like last night.

You can see the Corp of Engineers dam under the awning.

Although the wood supporting the awning needs repairs it is a nice campground with flush toilets and showers.



I like the small raised wood or charcoal fired fireplace for cooking.  It has a draft chamber in the back.  I wonder how well it works.



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