Still Catching up - Long drive into - and out of Kansas

      

6/16 - We're on the way to Prairie Dog State Park, near Norton, KS. 
Kansas is mile after mile of straight, straight roads. Very pretty scenery with the rolling hills and the Plains vegetation and wheat fields, but the road to Norton, KS is just straight, straight road. (With lots of Bugs landing the hard way on the windshield.)

On the way, we passed close by the 'Geographical Center of the US', per the sign...

We finally made it to the Prairie Dog State Park in Kansas. This Park was developed to celebrate a large  field of Prairie Dog homes, some of which we were able to capture on film Memory Card. This was the easiest Prairie Dog to capture. He is about 6 feet high on the sign.

The real Prairie Dogs are not as easy to get a picture of. When you try getting close to their homes, they emit a squeaky warning 'bark' to notify all their neighbors that something is not right in the field.... (Thereby the name Prairie Dog.) Then they all pop back into their holes and hide for a while. Their main predators are Hawks, Eagles and Rattlesnakes and I assume, people since they are very skittish about people too. The people trying to get pictures also have to look out for the Rattlesnakes.

Here are a couple of Prairie Dog families.



And some singles

It is really difficult to get close enough for a good picture.

Where is my 300 MM Lens?

Another elusive picture was this Robin feeding her chicks. Their nest was in the tree on our campsite, but we couldn't get too close to them either.

From Prairie Dogs and Robins to Tennis Players. I think we had better find a tennis court soon. Sylvia is practicing her backhand in the motorcoach.

The lake in this State Park was also created by damming up a creek, as can be seen by some of the trees that have been 'relocated' into the lake.

Sat 6/18 - Now it's on to Colorado, but on the way out of the Park, attempting to get a better picture of the lake, I got the Coach and Toad into a position where I could not turn around, so I had to disconnect the Toad and turn the coach around separately.

So we made the best of it by putting the top down, and creating a picture opportunity of Sylvia, the car,

and the lake.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN...  Did I mention the straight, straight roads in Kansas?

Entering Colorado, we saw an ominous sky and heard tornado warnings on the radio. It wasn't long before the rain started, then hail started hitting the windshield. It sounded like it was going to break the windshield, so we pulled off the highway and stopped on an exit. Here is what happened next.

Holy Hail Batman....

and it just kept coming.......

It really sounded like it was tearing the coach apart.

It ended up with almost an inch of hail on the road, but it eventually stopped

and Sylvia got out of the coach in her flip-flops and made a snowball, or hailball...

Poor Baby!  Never been in snow or hail before!!

The car, not Sylvia. 

It stopped as quickly as it started, however the road was quite slick for a while with all the ice on it, so we pulled into a Truck Stop and filled up with Diesel Fuel and a couple pieces of Pizza, and just let the ice melt.

Now it's on the road to Colorado Springs.