The Destinators

Ohh, Nooo…

Well, it was bound to happen at some point. And that point was on I-70, near Grinnell, KS, just after 2:00 on a Friday afternoon, when our engine suddenly quit, every light on the dashboard came on, and we coasted to a stop on the shoulder. Trying to restart the engine failed. Jump-starting failed. We had fuel, the fuel filter wasn’t clogged, there were no ominous fluids leaking from underneath, not overheating, plenty of oil, no smoke, nothing obviously broken or burnt – no failure or problem that I could figure out with my limited skills and automotive knowledge. So we made our first-ever call to the roadside service provider we’ve had on retainer ever since we got the motorhome (Good Sam). They found us a diesel repair shop in Colby, Kansas, about 40 miles up the road from where we were stalled, and dispatched a tow truck to take us up there.

Strataca – Kansas Underground Salt Museum – Hutchinson, KS

Old Carey Salt Company salt car on abandoned rail

In 1923, the Carey Salt Company in Hutchinson, KS dropped a mine shaft 650 feet below the earth’s surface to tap into a large salt deposit. This salt deposit, formed 275 million years ago, is one of the world’s largest and spans much of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The mine has been in continuous operation since it opened, changing ownership a few times. The mine is now owned by the Hutchinson Salt Company and it yields about 5,000 tons of salt every day, most of it used for ice-melting applications and various other industrial and agricultural purposes. Table salt, also produced in this region though not at this mine, is extracted in a very different process that involves pumping fluids down to the salt layer to dissolve salts and pumping the solution back to the surface for refining.

There are 14 other salt mines in the US. The only mine that offers underground tours is this one in Hutchinson – the Kansas Underground Salt Museum – which is now run by a non-profit educational foundation called Strataca.

Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Park – Topeka, KS

On our last trip through Kansas (nine years ago!), we wrote that Kansas had no national parks for us to see. That changed in 2022 – and that change has (so far) withstood our government’s renewed scrutiny of National Park Service facilities.

Goin’ to Kansas City…

Kansas City, here I come. I’m gonna be standing on the corner – the corner of Twelfth Street and Vine…

…with my Kansas City baby, and a bottle of Kansas City wine.

St Louis and Columbia

Photo of the 150-year old Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River (Missouri History Museum)

A favorite part about being in the midwest is catching up with members of my family that we don’t get to see very often. With the A/C saga behind us, we aimed for Missouri where temps were forecasted to hover around 100. Does the outdoor thermometer on the RV get to 3-digit numbers?

Ashtabula and Ostrander, OH, thoughts on route-finding, and the Great Air Conditioner Saga of 2025

Sue recently pointed out that our approach to route-finding often places a much higher priority on visiting different places to do interesting things with great people than it does on efficiency or saving time or following a direct route. These priorities brought us not only to Cincinnati, but also to the two Ohio towns in the title of this post.

I want to point out that I am writing perhaps three posts in one right now. The two visits in this post sandwiched the visit in the previous post and the A/C saga spans all three of those, as well as the one before that. In the past, we’ve tried to remain chronologically consistent in our posts, but this shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Still, please pay attention!

Cincinnati – deux

We headed out from the Drumeo meetup in Hamilton, ON, nominally en route to this year’s upcoming Blues Guitar Unleashed live jam near Denver, CO. Now, a direct route between Hamilton, ON and Denver wouldn’t normally go through Cincinnati. Fortunately, we don’t care about direct routes nearly as much as we do about going different places and seeing different people, and we love getting together with my piano buddy Honghong. Last year’s visit was way too much fun, so there’s no chance we’d pass up another opportunity!

Set course for Cincinnati!

Hamilton, ON – Drumeo live meetup, Do It Again!

Dinner – Jim, Thora, James, Marlene, Vihar, Sean, Sue, top of Doug’s hat, Mike’s right eye, Bram, Ed, Ale

The first live Drumeo meetup of our online drum student group we attended was in 2022 in Toronto. Last year’s (nearly) annual meetup was in Hamilton, ON. In the infamous words of Brian Wilson, it was so good, Do It Again! We wouldn’t miss another chance to meet up with the Drumeo group, again in Hamilton.

Something a little different… deux

Last year, we planned something a little different, and it went, well, the way plans often go. Planning to explore the Southwest US in the fall, we reached LA in time to learn my mom needed surgery for her broken hip – in Florida! The last 2/3rds of our trip were replaced by an about-face and a coast-to-coast dash across the South. Everything worked out in the end and it was a fine trip. And certainly a little different…

This year’s trip planning was easy – let’s go back and finish last year’s plan! So, is this still something different? Or more of the same?

Home

Well, it wasn’t the trip we’d planned – exploring the Southwest – and we saw enough to know we want to go back there to catch the people, national parks and other cool places we missed. Although we’d visited much of the Southeast before, we did manage to see a few new places and enjoy new experiences, as well as help out my mom. We learned that if necessary, we could get across the country quickly. And we confirmed that the concept of traveling in the fall with a careful reentry into New England after the first snows was not only doable, but adds a different kind of beauty and fun with just a few adaptations of the usual RV logistics.