\nWe left the Blue Springs parking area
\nabout 9:00 which should have easily gotten us to St Charles by 10:30
\nAM. The drive was less than 60 miles. It always seems that the
\nshort drives are the worst. Even though it was Sunday morning, the
\ntraffic was terrible and then, we came to an area where they had I 70
\nshut down for a accident. It took us about a half an hour to edge
\nforward in the traffic (they were diverting folks off the highway.)
\nWhen we got within a half of a mile of the wreck, they opened up the
\nhighway and we did OK after that. That said, the traffic was still
\npretty bad and our exit was a bit of a challenge, but we made it.\n<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nBy the time I got into the Wal Mart lot
\n(did I mention it was very tight?) I was a wreck. As I was unhooking
\nthe truck two folks came up and asked if I was a Colorado driver. I
\nthought that was a strange question, and then the guy introduced
\nhimself as Kevin Brown \u2013 the son of the lady we were going to spend
\nthe day with.\n<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nAs a bit of background, Kenny and Kay
\nBrown had three boys in the same time-frame as our three girls.
\nKenny and I were good friends and we attended a lot of car shows
\ntogether all over the country. Kenny and I would work on some paint
\nproject in the garage and Pat and Kay would play all kinds of games
\nan compare notes on what it was like to raise the \u201copposite gender\u201d
\nchildren. They moved away from Denver about 44 years ago, but we
\nstayed in touch. Kenny passed away about 10 years ago.<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nKevin and I have communicated a few
\ntimes over the years and we have a lot in common. He is an engineer
\nand loves cars (races a 2009 Challenger). After Kay, Pat and I had
\nlunch, Kay dropped me off at Kevin’s house and we had a great time.
\nI got to see his car and we talked like old time friends.\n<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nPat and Kay continue to have lots in
\ncommon. Now, they are both into genealogy. They picked up where
\nthey left off many years ago without missing a beat. The three of us
\nhad two great meals in the amazing downtown historic district of St
\nCharles.<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nToday we got an early start so that we
\ncould get out of the Wal Mart lot before it became \u201ccrazy\u201d. We
\nhad planned to drive the 900 miles to Evergreen in four days so that
\nthe drive would be relaxing. I wanted to make sure that we got
\nthrough Kansas City today (not a fun drive normally, and today they
\nhad I 70 closed for construction \u2013 had to take I 435 around the
\ntown to the south). By the time we got out of the traffic, we could
\nnot find a place to park, so we jumped on the turnpike and ended up
\nhere. That was a bit over 300 miles.<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nWe are watching the weather in
\nEvergreen and there is a winter storm watch for Tuesday, late
\nafternoon (sever inches of snow possible). That is changing our
\nplans. We will try to get around early tomorrow and get close to the
\nCO\/KS border, so that we have a fairly easy shot into Denver on
\nTuesday. If the conditions look bad, we will stay at Chatfield State
\nPark for a Day or two until the weather gets better.<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n
\nThat is all for now.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello from Topeka, KS Sunday evening October 23, 2011 (seventh travelogue of this trip). We are parked at a Wal Mart in Topeka KS (map). This Wal Mart parking lot is large and fairly easy to get into. We can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beltguy.com\/Travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}