Day 3: Kansas–Big Sky when slow; aged beef; civil defense theory & practice
It’s afternoon when we finally leave STL. We get partway across MO and find ourselves exhausted in Jeff City. We’d told my sis and bro that we intended to drive small roads and avoid freeways, so they showed us a way to go. My sis mentioned that you can camp along the Katy Trail and that it’s in town there. We are confused upon arrival late at night but after chatting with a few speedfreak clerks we figure out that there’s a Trail access point just off the freeway and that you can, I guess, camp there. We find a parking lot accessing this classic, huge rail-to-trail. It’s next to a freeway, behind an all-nite golf driving range with heavy equipment parked next to it. Martha isn’t biting. But we give in and set up the big, puffy tent in the hot, breezy grass. The glaring lights and the freeway roar and the sight of our little angels snug in their bags give us a bit of unease, but we sleep fine.
In the morning we see cars are already parked and people stretching, biking, etc. We look out of place but I checked the trail sign last night by flashlight and it said camping is OK. People are jogging. We’re brushing our teeth and having cereal on a flatbed trailer near the trail. Martha went for a ride down the trail and said it went down to the Mississippi river just right over that rise. We roll.
That afternoon our backroad route takes us through Sedalia. A lovely little town. With some size and heft to it, though. The downtown has a classic oldtime out-west feel. Not the wide open style of some, but the canyon-of-buildings style. Well preserved.
There’s a Schwinn shop that hasn’t changed. Not even in terms of stock. The old guy running it said he’s been there for 67 years and he still had some brand new models from the 60’s and 70’s on display. Collector alert! On the wall behind the counter was a huge, mint condition Schwinn thematic display, with overarching layers of signage saying something like “Ride a Schwinn bicycle todayfor fun and for your health!” in huge chrome lettering.
The Bothwell Hotel downtown is like stepping back in time, with its tile floor, white-wood-and-brass everything, and its little service shops on the lower level opening into the foyer along with a steakhouse that opened off to the side. It had a speakeasy in the basement that opens in the evening. It’s all fully restored.
On the edge of town we found a huge civic park full of sports fields and an old whitewashed baseball pavilion and new waterpark. The waterpark was nicely designed with a big winglike awning. The teens were in attendance. Kids were doing baseball practice. A vibrant place. We had lunch and I did calisthenics. We rolled.
We’ve been impressed by mid to western Mizoo. It’s a taste of the west close to the Midwest, if that’s convenient for you. It also has great roads, hills, vineyards, classy old towns with a vast river rolling thru them with dramatic bluffs. Enough for inspiration and a worthy destination of its own. But we roll.
Things open WAY up. We’re in Kansas now and it’s evening. I try to think of a good reason to be in Kansas and I suddenly remember: beef! I flip through Roadfood, the only highlightsof-the-hinterlands food guidebook: nothing. Then I grab another that’s just a listing of everything and I study each town. Suddenly I find one: a restaurant offering DRY AGED BEEF. They mention it in their two-line micro-listing. To some people (me) this is an important thing. It’s part of the nearly-lost art of making great steak. We’ve only had it once and it was alarmingly good, special, interesting and rather exotic. Back then we realized we needed to look into this some more: Should we be dry-aging our venison? What’s up here? I compare the restaurant to our route. Hey, it’s just 15 miles off the road an hour ahead. Perfect for dinner! Martha says No, let’s not detour. (Memo to myself: If you find dry-age beef anywhere near you at all, don’t screw up: go. We never found another to stop at.)
We look for places to stay. We decide on a huge reservoir in the middle of the prairie a couple hours ahead. We turn off the small highway to a smaller road. The sky opens up. The fields truly become endless rolling yellow. It’s amazing how even a slightly big road diminishes this. Then suddenly we find trees, green, cottages, and see water. We find the state campground. It’s a scattering of shelters in a sea of golden rolling field with green trees in swales leading down to the water. The shelters are like concrete wings. They are swooping tentlike shapes, lovely. I’m guessing that they vaguely allude to teepees. We don’t quite get it. There are no johns. But we camp anyway. It’s very windy.
Later that night a sound of loud rock’n’roll comes down along the road and a pickup rolls into view near us and heads farther on down the range of little pavilions. It stops. Then comes rolling back and on over a hill. We hear some noise, then quiet. I go scout after a bit. I see the truck and a half set-up old canvas tent flapping in the wind and a pile of firewood. Later yet I peek again and no truck. We never saw it again. We have a fear that America is going to catch up to us any time now and give us some screaming drunk fellow campers who rage all night. Yet so far our luck holds. Three nights in a row where we’re the only ones in sight!
It is nearly a rule for us–and one we tend to forget–that if we stay in a campground, public or private, we will have screaming drunks for our neighbors, or we will have generators roaring all night long, and no one else will mind. This is the real America. Who cares about politics, I care about noise. If you have insane noise you can’t have civics, I don’t care what brand you like.
I prefer to camp on undeveloped public land. Every million-acre state or national forest has a couple campgrounds, sure, but that leaves most of the rest of the million acres open to quieter camping. (Of course, I’ve had plenty of mid-woods screaming and all-night offroad racing and fireworks near me, too.)
But boony camping makes some people nervous. It might even make me nervous. Who knows what’s out there. One time I went hiking for a week in the boonies, in bear country, and put my food up in a tree every night, and every day while hiking I stumbled across a bear. A couple times I’d look left and see a cub then right and see a mother. I didn’t break the bear-safety rules, they broke themselves. I was by myself and at night I heard noises.
Comfort is easy to find.
After the bears, when I camp, I include defense. To me defense doesn’t need defending, but there are folks who disagree. I guess I consider them to be close to kooks. But they probably think the same of me. I suppose it’s pointless to try to discuss anything across this particular divide.
I don’t care whose ‘turf’ I’m supposedly ‘unnaturally’ invading when I choose to defend myself. All ecosystems include me if I choose to go into them. I am nature. That’s my take. I am society, too, within reasonable law and custom. Civics includes the right of defense in my book. Pick your own book if you like. So when I travel and camp I cover the bases for survival and defense.
Martha recalls our first big roadtrip when I talked her into tenting on public land in the boonies off the side of a two-track. I said it was no problem, nothing to fear. She hesitated but went along with me. We set up tent and were getting ready to snuggle in for the night when I started stacking up a pile of sizeable rocks at the front of the tent. She asked “What’s that?” I said “For defense.” –In case of critters, people, whatever. She got scared, she later said. But she settled in. What did she know.
The kids have been great so far on this trip. Henry plays with his modeling clay and Lucy sings. They stay great the whole trip, pretty much. What cuties. They inspire us as we drive. Of course they have their childish weaknesses, too. On the second half of the trip I suppose they fatigued some. Can you imagine being strapped in those 4-point astronaut harnesses all day? When we were kids going on car vacations we got to loll around everywhere in the car. I recall even trying to hang out in the backwindow ledge, trying to make forts down in the footwells. Anyway, we went to several restaurants with them on this trip. Not many really, but a few. The kids would get wild there about half the time. Not too wild, but wild enough. But I don’t think we had a single spilled milk, so there’s that. We also noticed that which parent would be driven nuts by what they were doing would alternate. We’d also have some Henry hitting and Lucy squealing kind of dynamic, which increased on the second half. Still, they kept their act together all in all.
At the beginning, Henry was lizard and snake oriented. He knew we were going to places where he might see these things, might see different kinds than usual. Might even see a rattlesnake. This theme persisted throughout the trip.
Lucy simply loved her Philadelphia Chickens CD and songbook. She sang along with every song and “read” along with every song at the same time. Thankfully they are fine songs because we heard them over 100 times. Well, we’re a pretty harmonious family: if the songs had sucked the CD would not have survived. But then maybe we’re easy to please.
The minivan had a prime luxury: a video screen. The kids could watch movies. It had cordless headsets so we didn’t have to hear the movies. We could plug their little minds into the fantasy machine and enjoy the drive. (It seems like a certain kind of fantasy is good for kids of a certain age. Too bad about the rest. Well, I think we pick good vid’s anyway. See my kid’s vid listings at the OYB site.) The headsets soon stopped working. But the video provided daily diversion for an hour or so.
Every now and then we’d look back and see H and L holding hands as they sat with faces aglow in the electronic light.
I quickly realized that I brought about twice as much stuff as I should have. For proper roadtripping this flaw needs to be eradicated.
Uncle Kent is a big ole guy, over 6’6″, with a deep, huge voice. He’s not known to tolerate foolishness. When I was a kid we drove West once and met him and Jo halfway, in Colorado. I’d never seen a yucca plant. We were all in the car and I kept noticing yuccas. There’s a yucca. There’s another yucca. Suddenly the windows shook as Kent boomed “For God’s sake, shut up about the *&#@ yuccas!” I was paralyzed in shock. We used this story frequently on the drive to Hollywood. The kids picked up on the challenge and the risk. They needed to learn how to behave. Or else. Every now and then as we drove we’d hear from the back “So how big is Uncle Kent?” Followed by thoughtful silence. It worked.
Martha packed perfectly for herself and the kids. Well, almost. She brought a good bit too much as well.
So we had to stop and buy a $50 rooftop bag to give tolerable daily access to interior supplies.
Man, we saw so many rocket-boxes and roofbags across the Plains. (But few in California!) Mostly they were on minivans and SUVs. We never saw anything like this on our last big drive 12 years ago. This gear didn’t exist back then. I remember when the first rocket-boxes appeared and seemed like an indulgence for the disorganized and wealthy.
I wish I had made a rocket-box myself, of plywood. I fantasized about doing it on this trip. I could do it with 2 full sheets of thin plywood, a saw, some screws, brackets, caulk, hinges. It would have that compelling DIY style. You want a rocket-box, I’ll give you a rocket-box!
Martha nixed that idea and we got the roof-bag instead. Those bags are annoying to load. And they hurt mileage and power! Our Town Car gets 24 on the road. The minivan only gets 18 at best. With the roofbag it got 17 and less.
I’d intended this trip to be partly for business. The OYB brain would be working the whole time, scanning for opportunity and detail. So I brought along about 30 pounds of inventory. It came in handy but, really, there wasn’t time.
Actually, the whole trip was a dash. We lingered twice, in SF and LA, otherwise zoom-zoom. And how to refresh years of dreaming about places I used to know in SF and LA in just a few days? Still, we noticed stray things here and there.
I had big OYB magnetic door signs made up beforehand. And I stuck up nearly all my range of OYB bumperstickers. And the whole way out I had the van festooned with dozens of Social Stickers: my moveable magnet hobby stickers. I installed them in a continuous wave-form along the front, sides and back of the van. It looked cool. People gawked for thousands of miles. Until Martha got fed up. She didn’t like the gawking. We simplified the presentation. And clustered them near the rear in a milder swarming-hive affect.
I gave them away as we drove along. Kids seemed to like them most, but occasional adults caught the gist. People would typically stare but not in detail, at least when we were around, so I suppose they’d miss the fine-print that stated what they were about. But that’s part of the point. They’re meant to be stickers that stay. Or move. For those in the know. They can stay, but it’s OK if they move. To know they move, you have to care enough to look a little closer. There’s a little life lesson here, eh? Data wants to be free, but one has to care.
The next day we both took bike rides around the wide open empty prairie road around the rez. As I rode along, in one place I suddenly smelled a great smell. I think it was sage. Then it was gone. From then on, we gathered sage and kept it in the van. Some ways of handling it would result in a nice smell, other times we’d have a bundle with no smell noticeable in the vehicle at all.
The old guy at the ranger station says this place was an old stage stop. That was neat to know. To feel a bit of historic longitude for where we were, history being a strange thing for so much of the made-over, erased, cleansed suburbia where I live. There were a lot of pictographs on the cliffs across the water from our campsite, from Indians of 5 nations, but they’re off limits. You can see them from a boat, though.
