Night on the Prairie

From the recreated Little House on the Prairie, we drove west, pausing for a brief sojourn into Oklahoma so that we could add that state to our list of states.  By this point we had been through

1.     Virginia,

2.     Maryland,

3.     Pennsylvania,

4.     West Virginia,

5.     Ohio,

6.     Indiana,

7.     Illinois

8.     Missouri,

9.     Kansas, and

10.  Oklahoma.

Returning to the wide open and rather lonely highways in Kansas, I was struck by the number of trees growing in the eastern part of the state – wind-breaks, young trees in abandoned fields, trees along the river banks.  The last gasp of the great eastern USA forest that had accompanied us since the first miles of our journey.

Kansas is a long state to drive through particularly if you have detoured far away from the interstate highways and are mostly traveling on two-lane roads.  We filled up on CNG in Wichita, and the headed west toward Colorado.  A night drive.  David was strapped into his bed on the top of the load.  Anna and Miriam slept in their car seats.  Sarah and Leah each made the best of the two seats available to them.  Kansas wound onwards for miles.

The thunder and lightning began around Wichita, and continued for most of our traverse of the state.  Sometimes it rained where we were.  At other times we only saw the evidence of it raining elsewhere flash across the sky. 

As we climbed into the high plains, a long string of red blinking lights appeared in the distance.  An airport?  It was hard to tell how far off they were, but as we drew closer the bulk of the lights became apparent.  We entered an absolutely enormous wind farm which stretched on for miles in all directions.  Gigantic wind turbine after gigantic wind turbine.  All turning in the trans-continental breeze.