Saturday, April 4…Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head (B.J. Thomas)

   Sleep was going good until about 4 a.m., when the hotel fire alarm went off. 😳 There was a brief moment of confusion, then we jumped out of bed to assess the situation. I wondered if it was just our room or hotel wide. The door wasn’t hot, so I cautiously opened it to find other sleepy people poking their heads out, too…some were already heading to the stairs. So, it’s the entire hotel. Then someone sent word that there was no fire, that it was a false alarm. It seems this had happened sometime during the day on Friday also and at that point it was determined to be a malfunction of something.

    Anyway, we went back to bed…two of our trio were able to fall back asleep quickly (Mom and Kim) and one tossed and turned, smelling for smoke (me). Eventually I did fall asleep; when the phone alarm tinkled at me, I turned it off and dozed off again. So, as a result, we didn’t get on the road as soon as we’d planned but better late than never, right?

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    Sometime during the night, it started raining and continued as we drove through Illinois, Indiana and on into Michigan. It wasn’t a downpour, just steady. Radar indicated that the big, green cloud should have moved on long before we reached Michigan, but I guess Mother Nature didn’t get the memo.

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   Last night when we stopped, we had about 90 minutes left on A Superior Death, the Anna Pigeon audio book. Finished that this morning.  With less than 6 hours to go, it didn’t make sense to start another one as they’re usually 10 to 12 hours long. BUT I found an abridged version of Endangered Species, #5 in the Anna Pigeon series and less than 3 hours long.  Kim and Mom were game so we gave it a listen.

   Two things that ruined it for me: 1. Didn’t like the narrator, although I knew going in that it was not Barbara Rosenblat, narrator of the other two Anna Pigeon books, and 2. Too many details get left out of an abridged version, making it difficult to follow the characters and the storyline. So now I know.

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    Crossed into the Mitten at 2 p.m., EST.  Yeehaw!! Just under 300 miles to go. Temperature was 46^oand it was raining. The plan is to head straight to Charlevoix, and I’ll take Mom home on Monday or Tuesday.

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   Forty-six degrees in Big Rapids when we stopped for a bit to eat. The Culver’s parking lot was too small for our rig, so we parked in the Meijer parking lot and walked to Culver’s. My sweatshirt felt good and shorts were okay until the walk back to the truck, with the wind blowing against me. A wee bit chilly at that point.  

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   Arrived home just after 7:30 p.m. to a chilly outside temp of 38^o.  Only remnants of the recent snowstorm were scattered about the yard.

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Diesel Prices we paid on our drive to Michigan between April 1 and April 4, 2026:

Coolidge, AZ…4.74

Deming, NM…$5.25

Vaugh, NM…$4.99

Liberal, KS…$4.74

Ellsworth, KS…$4.44 

Hiawatha, KS…$4.69

Bevier, MO…$4.64

Chenoa, IL…$5.59

Big Rapids, MI…$5.37

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We didn’t get fuel in Eloy/Picacho but the cost was $6.19 at the time of our departure.

 

Friday, April 3…Rolling Hills (Van Morrison)

   On the road before 8 a.m. We’re looking to make up some miles from yesterday; the tire episode set us back a couple of hours. Doesn’t seem like that would make a huge difference but when we point ourselves homeward, we’re looking at over 2100 miles or 31 hours of driving time. That’s when those two hours seem like a big deal. These are long days for all of us but especially Kim. He does all the driving and as such, he’s the one who dictates how many miles or hours we do in a day. Yesterday we did not make his intended goal.

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   The area around Dodge City, KS, embraces its windiness. It’s impossible to calculate how many wind turbines were dotting the landscape but talking amongst us, I said there had to be hundreds of acres of turbines out there. But then it occurred to me that I have no concept of what an acre looks like, how much land it encompasses. I googled ‘how far apart do wind turbines need to be”. After reading several articles of technical information about wind direction, turbulence, wakes, etc., it boils down to this: one turbine on one acre is a basic guideline. So…I amend my estimation to thousands of acres of wind turbines around Dodge City. Luckily, farmers can rent their land for wind turbine purposes and still use it for crops. Because that’s another feature of Kansas…lots of flat farmland.

   However, while a majority of Kansas seems to be used for agriculture, not all of it is flat. We headed north from Topeka to Fairview, then headed east on US 36 which took us through some rolling countryside. Decidedly not flat, yet still farmland.

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   Walked outside this morning to a cloudy sky with temperature in the 60s.  Sun really didn’t make an appearance all day; ran into rain in the afternoon somewhere in Kansas. But the air was warm every time we got out at a gas station or restaurant. My sweatshirt felt a little much but I’m still comfortably wearing shorts.

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   Stopped at a Sinclair gas station in Bevier, MO, and, for different reasons, all three of us remembered stopping there before. For me, it was the green dinosaur out on the lawn. This station is a blast from the past…a bona fide service station complete with service bays, uniform wearing mechanics wiping their hands on rags and the pervasive smell of oil. The inside had drink coolers along with a small amount of candy and chips. The majority of the space was given over to the comfort of customers who might have to wait for repairs: couches, a table with reading material, coffee pots, etc.  And a 4-foot-tall green Sinclair dinosaur. 🙂

   I always thought the dinosaur was a brontosaurus and its name was Dino. When I went online to verify his name, I found this on the website sinclairoil.com:   DINO (pronounced DYE-NO) was called a Brontosaurus when he was first used in Sinclair advertising. So why do we call him an Apatosaurusnow?

Dinosaur fossils are rare, which makes it difficult to study and classify them. Since 1903, paleontologists have had conflicting opinions about whether the Brontosaurus is its own unique genus, or whether it’s the same as the Apatosaurus. Sinclair has followed the prevailing opinions of the scientific community, which currently favors calling DINO an Apatosaurus – though new research may eventually change that.  I’ve been pronouncing his name wrong all these years.

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   Today was all about driving and listening to another Nevada Barr book. Today’s selection was A Superior Death, the second in the Anna Pigeon series. I confess that more than once I dozed off. I usually listen to audio books when I’m driving, or my hands are busy with work. Listening and just sitting in the passenger seat made me drowsy.  It helped when I employed the ‘Read and Listen’ option on the Audible app. Reading along on my phone as the book was being read over the truck’s audio system helped keep my brain busy. Occasionally the highlighting of words on my phone and the words being spoken would get out of sync but I learned to deal with it. Definitely a first world problem.

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   Stopped for the night in Springfield, Illinois. Kim drove over 650 miles today, about 530 miles left.