Acclimating Day

Date: June 06, 2009

Event: Drive to western Kansas

Pre-Acclimating Day Comments

Depart Nashville - We hope to get an early start, but we will see. Amy has family in town that we also want to visit. We chose to leave on the weekend so that the traffic would be easier going through the major cities of Saint Louis and Kansas City. The interstates will probably be shut down to do construction instead! We are planning to drive to the last rest area in Kansas, about 985 miles. With luck we will only be driving 17 hours (easy traveling), putting us at the rest area around 10pm. The Kansas rest areas have a camping loop. We will sleep in the Element after playing with Jake for a while.

Post-Acclimating Day Comments

Last night we stayed up longer than expected. We made some packing errors and did not have enough time to totally recover from them. We decided not to worry about it and fix them in Boulder. We left Nashville at around 5:30 in the morning.

The trip was easy. We were at the last rest area in Kansas, around mile 5 (I will check the mileage in the morning - okay it is between mile 6 and 7) at 9:30 central time. So we were only driving sixteen hours, but there was little traffic or construction so we made good time.

Speaking of no construction, I have been driving on Interstate 70 through Kansas for years and it has always been under construction where lanes were shut for tens of miles. It was not today. All the lanes were open all the way across the state!

Kansas Oil

Kansas Oil

We are now bedding down in the back of the Element. The camping loop at the Kansas rest areas are pretty great. They allow you to catch a few hours of sleep but there is a lot of road noise. Oh, and they have an internet connection!

If we can sleep through the noise we are hoping to get a good nights rest and finish our drive in the morning. We will be hiking in the mountains tomorrow. We are very excited.