Kansas, all day!! Nice Pics of Camp ground..

Since we were in the Central time zone this morning for the first time in over a month, the clock looked all wrong when I woke up...  It said 7 AM but it was barely light outside...  We have been in Arizona for weeks and without daylight saving time, it gets light at 5:30 or so.....  But then 7 is 5 AM in Arizona......

So we kind of scurried around getting things packed up and breakfast over with....  Still we didn't get on the road until 9:30...  How does it work like that?  Did we unpack things so much just to stay overnight......?  But I guess the answer is yes...

Once on the road, we drove right along, even though the wind from last nights storms was still with us and crossing from the Northwest..  We were going Northeast so it was at a right angle to us....  Gusty and swerving the motorhome all over the road...

We managed to make the towns show up in our rear view mirrors as we had a lot of Kansas to cover.  I never see much that is interesting as I travel over this state...  No, I don't want to go to Dorothy's house, and I'm not interested in the Dalton gang's hideout in Mead....  The list goes on, but you get the picture...

The picture this year is farm ground that is mostly burned up from lack of rain...  I have seen a lot of Milo that must have been planted when the ground was too dry for corn....  Of course the wheat was long ago harvested, but the ground isn't plowed, as it would just become a dust bowl...

We ended up in Hutchinson after taking the usual diagonal K 61 from Pratt... Same ole same old...   I was trying to understand why I was using much more diesel fuel than normal and at first blamed it on the wind, but still it didn't seem right....

But then I started to look at last nights fuel receipt and realized that the tank wasn't filled up all the way...  The last 8 or so gallons seem to go on top of the full reading on the gauge, so you couldn't see the effect on it...  But calculating yesterday's mileage told me that we had accomplished 14 mpg, and this coach can't do that..... ever..   Besides, we had the generator running almost all afternoon, and it uses about .6 of a gallon per hour and that cuts into the 9.5 we usually get....

I stopped at a truck stop in Newton on Highway 50, and we had lunch back in the back with the other trucks......  that idle endlessly...   Not much interesting to watch today....  And eventually we came to Emporia, where I made up for not buying enough fuel for yesterday, by buying 10 gallons extra today...

We had decided that we wouldn't try to make it all the way home so one of our favorite family camping spots with the grandkids is Malvern Lake.  Its about 20 miles East beyond Emporia.

We like the Core of Engineer's campground that is on the outlet side of the dam.  So I had to dig out our senior pass, in order to camp for half price....  The fee is up to $20 this year, so we paid $10...  Full hookups...

The sites aren't long enough for our rig and the pickup truck too, but we are at the very end in the back of the camp, so perhaps the ranger won't get us....  And yes it is quite un level.  The front jacks are way out holding our tires off of the ground....  But we have screw jacks rather than hydraulic so they won't leak and think nothing of jacking the whole rig up like that....

Looking the other way is the tail water lake from the outlet of the big lake behind the dam...  The big lake is 20 miles long, but this little pond is about right for the campground....  No boats allowed...

The camp sites go all the way around to the other side of the lake in the distance.... But most of those sites are reserve able and taken on the internet....  We drove around there once it was dark, and there wasn't a single open spot...  Rigs are jammed in tight as a drum and folks are burning large campfires, smoking out the entire area.....  We'll be just fine over here on our side.....

A little different take on a dead tree picture.......

I walked down to the lake and sat on that park bench for a while, as the clouds covered the sky and then cleared...  But eventually it began to sprinkle and rain so I walked back to the MH...  But that just made it stop again...  This area desperately needs rain of any sort....

Tomorrow we will clean up the coach and its tanks while hooked up to the utilities and then hi tail it for home, which is only about 80 miles away.....

Retired Rod