By that I mean: “We keep heading South”
We are at the doorstep of New Orleans! To honor the end of our seventh quarter of road travel, we made this post to you, dear reader, within days of having experienced it. When we get to the Crescent City, we’ll try to lean on Instagram for more immediate storytelling (although we’ll do a post afterwards as well!).
Oct 3 – 4
We drive across the flat part of Colorado and western Kansas. Absolute emptiness: no trees, hardly any cars. Just us and the wind. We pass so many places that were once crossroad towns but are now just dilapidated buildings. But we did take time to enjoy the Roadside Van Gogh in Goodland, KS.
We arrive at an unexpected gem – Lake Scott State Park, just north of Scott City. Turns out that within the flats of Kansas is one last gasp of canyonland. We spend two nights here. On our full day here we do our best to take in all that Scott and Logan counties have to offer: we enjoy a bike around Lake Scott, check out some heavily advertised pueblo ruins, and then drive to the site of Punished Woman’s Fork (the last battle between Native Americans and the US Army in Kansas). Then we continued on into Scott City and checked out the adorable Scott City Historical Museum. We’re pretty sure it’s the lifelong hobby of the guy who greeted us at the door, plus a collection of 4-H projects. But it’s amazingly informative and covers lots of ground: geology, Native history, agriculture, pioneering, etc.
We narrowly missed the Scott City Homecoming Parade (the clues were people sitting in lawn chairs on street curbs and a car full of girls wearing tiaras).
Next stop: New Jerusalem Badlands, another surprising geological formation here on the prairie, complete with fossils of clams. All this stemming from the era when this was all the floor of an ocean! We walked around a bit, but it’s pretty hot & sunny and we’re tired. Plus we’ve left the best for last: Monument Rocks! Out of nowhere, tall rock formations. We caught them close to sunset, when the light is most interesting
Oct 5
Onward to Hesston! We stop for lunch at “That New Place” (which is anything but!) in the little town of Olmitz. Fantastic combo of concession stand, bar, and diner. Continuing on – it’s SO WINDY. We occasionally encounter big clouds of dust and tumbleweeds. And finally we reach the home of Bob & Cheryl, two more friends of Kayla’s from 25 years ago at Holden Village! It is entirely lovely to see them again, and we feel immediately at home with them and their enthusiastic dog pal, Sibby. We sit and chat for awhile, and then head up to Moundridge for pizza at The Hub. Excellent pizza, self-pour beer, and live music!
Oct 6
We have a big Central Kansas Extravaganza planned for today. On our drive we encounter a biker rally in Cassoday – hundreds of bikes are pouring into this small town today. Our first destination is Flint Hills Tallgrass Prairie Preserve for a nice stroll through beautiful grasslands to the Cottonwood River. Lots of opportunities for birding and seed-collecting! Then we head to Teter Rock – an old navigational aid for settlers heading west, and now the only remains of the ghost town of Teterville. Beautiful views across the rolling prairie from here. There are herds of wild horses in the area, and we see a few groups in the distance at Teter Rock and also along our drive.
Next stop: Lunch at Ad Astra, a fantastic burger joint in Strong City, followed by a tour of Spring Hill Ranch House, an impressive home built by a cattle ranching family in the mid-1800s. The local one-room school is just a short hike away, so we drop in for a visit there as well. We spot some buffalo on the horizon. Then we head back to Cottonwood Falls to check out the eponymous falls, as well as a little trickle known as Chase Lake Falls (although I just looked at some photos of these falls in early summer and/or after a heavy rain, and they are impressive!).
Once we’re back home in Hesston, Bob & Cheryl build a bonfire and we enjoy a beautiful evening outside.
Oct 7
We decide to stay in Hesston one more night. We take a quiet Monday while Bob & Cheryl go to work – we catch up on some work ourselves, do laundry, and make a nice dinner. Another wonderful evening of sharing stories and reconnecting with these lovely people. We’re so grateful for their open-armed hospitality and the awesome tour of their favorite spots in Kansas!
Oct 8-10
We head out and point toward Oklahoma. After a quick stop for provisions and a work meeting in Tulsa, we take a route that barely goes through any living towns. At one point we literally drove through a herd of cows. Our destination is a funky spot Matthew found on HipCamp: Prairie’s End Farm, near the town of Prue in Osage County. Wow, we are out in it. Prairie’s End is … well … near the end of the prairie. It’s another in a long list of places we’ve driven up to and wondered where the heck our GPS was taking us. We’re a little confused at first – we find the farm but it’s not at all clear where we’re supposed to camp. Fortunately our host sees us wandering around and come out to greet us with a freshly-baked loaf of sourdough along with her homemade pumpkin butter and apricot jam. It’s a really sweet place – we’re the only guests for these few days, so even though our campsite is basically just a mown area of prairie, we have access to her event center for a kitchen, toilet, and wifi.
It’s still really hot – temps in the mid-90s. We try to explore the area a bit, but the towns are fairly depressed, and it’s even kinda hard to access water (we did spend an afternoon on the shore of Keystone Lake, but they’re in the process of draining the lake so it’s pretty shallow and somewhat algae-fied).
Oct 11-12
Onward to Arkansas! We arrive at Daisy State Park, tucked into Lake Greeson somewhere in west-central Arkansas. Well, this isn’t what we were expecting. Though the map shows our site right next to the water, we didn’t understand that that was 50 feet almost straight down. Even the picnic table is a treacherous descent. We set up camp on our wee bit of asphalt.
As things heat up the next day, we learn there also isn’t really a place to swim on the lake – this area is for folks who have boats (seen in storage lots everywhere). We take a meandering drive through rural AR then head back to camp. We’ve booked three nights here, but decide to leave early.
Oct 13
We read about the city of El Dorado, “a city that punches above its weight”and head there. But hey, it’s a Sunday and the town is quiet. Well, except for music that plays from little speakers on the lightposts throughout downtown. We tried to find an RV park that wasn’t awful, checked out five of them and no luck. But we find that another hour’s drive into Louisiana will get us to what looks like a sweet spot, and we are right! Lincoln Parish Park is a grand place to enjoy the cool of the evening. We drive through nearby Ruston, home of Louisiana Tech, for some cold beverages and strike up easy conversation. We are told not to go to New Orleans (“that pee-pee place”) but to LaFayette, where the food is.
Oct 14-16
Too bad we can’t stay at Lincoln Parish longer, but we need to make tracks to Vidalia and River’s Edge RV Park, where we have booked a “primitive” spot. Primitive in this case means apparently not having a sewer hook up (cuz we do have electric and water). The RV park is mostly nice pull-throughs, with a pool! But we are directed to a grove of trees with utility poles sporadically placed with power outlets. Each pole had a light on it, and, yep, in the evening they lit up the primitive ground like a Friday night high school football game. The next day we found a great shady spot in the tent area and were quite satisfied. This campground has really friendly hosts, and the showers are fantastic!
And on that next day…cooler weather. Finally. Since we left Durango a month ago, the temps have been in the 90’s during the day. We are hoping this seasonably cool weather holds for the remainder of our trip.
Vidalia, LA is right on the Mississippi River, directly across from Natchez, MS. On our first evening, we enjoy the nice – although rather short – bike path along the river in Vidalia, then set up our chairs in a spot overlooking the river for sunset. We also spend an afternoon/evening exploring Natchez a bit – checking out some of the incredible architecture and taking in their earnest Museum of African American History. And we visited the historic Under the Hill Saloon.
To prepare for our upcoming week in New Orleans we’ve been stretching our stomachs with some full-on Southern meals. On the way to Vidalia we had crazy good, legit BBQ at Danken Trail in Monroe, and for lunch today crazy good new-Southern cuisine at Slick Ricks in Natchez (Kayla had the “Southern BLT”: blackened chicken, fried green tomatoes, pepper jack, remoulade sauce, bacon and lettuce on Texas toast).
Oct 17-18
This whole area is a-buzz with anticipation for the upcoming hot air balloon festival, and this RV park is a hot ticket. They’re preparing for 125 check-ins today! As we emerge from our camper this morning, one hot air balloon is floating overhead and another is launching across the river. Too bad we can’t stay – sounds like it’s going to be an awesome weekend! But we need to keep moving south. Today’s destination: another funky HipCamp at Big Branch farm/apiary near Mendeville, LA, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Once again, we drive backroads and end up winding through some beautiful tree-lined areas. Big Branch is amazing: just one hard-working couple plus some “WWOOF-ers” (volunteers through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) tending to a big blueberry patch, about 100 chickens, a couple dozen chatty ducks, peacocks, sheep, a sweet mule named Gloria, and – of course – bees. Our campsite is on the other side of the blueberry patch; as they show us the way, they point out the creek where there can be snakes and alligators, and also warn us that their friend is going to park his truck near us tonight but he’ll be hiking deeper into the property to hunt wild pigs (!!!).
We spent both evenings in the nearby town of Mandeville: the first night we find a spot to catch the sunset over Lake Pontchartrain, and also happened to catch the high school homecoming parade as well! Nothing like some amped-up teenaged athletes throwing candy and beads at the crowd (yes, beads. We’re just across the lake from New Orleans!).
On Friday we spent the whole afternoon on our bikes! Turns out this farm is immediately adjacent to the Tammany Trace Bike Trail, Louisiana’s oldest Rails-to-Trails path. Within the first two miles from camp we stop into Fontainebleau State Park and tool around a bit. Then onward to Mandeville for another awesome southern lunch at the Rusty Pelican, followed by more lakefront biking. We topped it off with a beverage on the 2nd floor balcony of Barley Oak, where we could watch all the lakefront traffic and lots of people starting to enjoy their weekend.
Oct 19
Twyla has an adventure driving across water – we drove the 23-mile bridge across Lake Pontchartrain and arrived in New Orleans! It’s gonna be a great week.