The Destinators

BGU/DEN: Parker, CO

Blues Guitar Unleashed regional jams have been a regular enough feature in this blog that I’m not going to open this post with another explanation of what they are (although if you need that, see my posts from last year or the year before that). Beginning last December my friend and fellow musician Bob (aka BobbyUT) has been making and tweaking all the necessary arrangements for our gang of blues brothers and sisters to get together this fall in his hometown of Parker, Colorado, just south of Denver, for 4-1/2 days of music and mayhem. That event took place last week, and history was made. Again.

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO

On my cross-country bike trip in 1983, I stopped in Morrison, CO. A local suggested I check out the Red Rocks Amphitheatre – a natural outdoor theatre that had been enhanced and turned into a performance venue. Although there was no show there that day/evening, it sounded like it might be a cool place to see, so I biked up to the entrance. I was in awe of this performance space tucked in between giant red rocks, surrounded by such stunning views! I spent the rest of the day hiking in and around the theatre.

Had there been a show, it would likely not have fit into my bike-bum’s budget. Sigh. Coming back someday to see a show was one of the first official items on my shiny new bucket list. It only took me 42 years to check it off!

Parker, CO

As mentioned in Doug’s post, the uncertainty of how long we’d be waiting for RV repair was unnerving. Sitting day after day in a dimly lit hotel room with only a bed and 2 chairs at the Quality Inn behind the Mercedes repair center would get old fast. And although we were surrounded by shopping malls with a huge choice of chain restaurants, the prospect of visiting those twice a day for more than a couple of days had limited appeal. We needed a change of attitude, a plan B. After all, people fly into Denver for vacation all the time without RVs. What do they do? What could we do without our RV?

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!