Tuesday’s drive from Oklahoma to New Mexico was long but uneventful, and mostly along Interstate 40. Just a little bumpy, as the Rough Road sign attested, when we crossed the New Mexico border.

Our stop at Santa Rosa Lake State Park is a two night stay, giving us some time to relax and unwind in a beautiful setting. We’ve stayed here before and enjoy the spacious sites perched upon a hill overlooking the lake. We had dinner at Diane and Jan’s on Tuesday, and a nice mid-morning hike on Wednesday along the shoreline. I had enough cell service to be able to spend some time on my laptop doing desk work, which is always a relief when travel extends for longer than a week. Dinner on Wednesday was at our place.

We broke up today’s travel with a stop at Washita Battlefield National Historic Site in Oklahoma. It was a place Paul and I had seen with Emily on a different year, so I already had my Junior Ranger badge (teehee). We watched the film, strolled through the museum, and walked the loop path through the prairie behind the Visitor Center.

Basically, at dawn, General Custer attacked an encampment of sleeping, mostly peaceful Cheyenne Indians, under the protection of peace-seeking Chief Black Kettle, on the banks of the Washita River. He mistook them to be the warring faction camped further along the shoreline. Upon realizing who they were, he took the women and children as prisoners of war, burned all of their belongings to the ground, and slaughtered their horses. At least that part of our history hasn’t been overwritten by our current administration.

Alrighty then. This is why I find blogging to be precarious these days….

Our stop for the evening is a simple one, but there is a very nice nature path here and we were able to happy hour and dine outside for the first time this trip, which was awesome. No biting bugs! Another early night (after some cribbage), and early bedtime for Tuesday’s 6:30 am wake up call and 8:00 am departure – this has become our standard this caravan.

We traveled another 270-some miles on Saturday, cutting across Kansas from the northeast to the central south. We landed at Cheney State Park, which is a massive park on a reservoir lake. Massive and, from the looks of things, under-staffed and under-budgeted. Poor park has seen better days. But the sites were very large and the local families (all squeezing out one last fall hurrah) packed up and departed on Sunday morning, leaving the place (virtually) to ourselves.

I have been waiting to blog, with the intention to write more about Saturday’s drive across the countryside – through fields booming with large agribusiness facilities and towns littered with abandoned businesses, but frankly, I don’t know where to begin. The whole situation is extremely complicated, and (nowadays) so fraught with political nuance, that I think I will leave that essay for another day and let my photos tell their own story.

Suffice it to say it was a mostly pretty drive, though much of Kansas can be deadly flat for my tastes. A real highlight was our lunchtime stop in Manhattan, to dine at The Chef. This is the restaurant they ate at frequently in the Hulu limited series Somebody Somewhere. If you haven’t seen it, please check it out. What a gem. (The meal was decent, and the town picturesque.)

We had a nice three mile walk on Sunday, meandering through the woods and pastures of Cheney State Park. Crumbled tar and lacking signage be damned, it was a fertile forest with a floor composed of a strange mix of clay and fine sand. The goldfish pond picnic area was a real highlight – particularly the monarch-encrusted trees, and watching the frogs leap back into the goldfish pond as Paul walked the perimeter (I caught only the last few seconds of this).

We traveled 276 miles today, through the beautiful rolling countryside of western Iowa and northwestern Missouri, full of corn and soybeans resplendent in their reddish-bronze and golden fall glory. Farmland undulating to the horizon; fields harvested at various crop tops, rolling into the distance like so many barber school subjects. Silos and farmhouses punctuating the hilltops in an uneven row of awaiting chairs.

Our drive took about six hours, and included a brief fuel, then potty/lunch stop, and one regroup as we discussed how the turn I’d missed rerouted us a half hour longer – through even more small, scenic towns. I’d been chatting with our Tucson contractor Martín, who is in the demolition phase of Paul’s and my downsizing project, and I was so engrossed in visualizing our closet and main bathroom floor plan modifications that I neglected to see the Apple Maps countdown to turn right until it was too late.

Quite incorrectly, I assumed the right turn a mile and a half further down the road would bring us back in line with our original itinerary. Sadly, it did not. But on the plus side we drove through Dickens, Kiron, and Persia. Then Carson and Emerson. And it wouldn’t have been the same journey had we skipped Shenandoah and Tarkio … or so my camera roll tells me. Hah!

We arrived at tonight’s stopover – Indian Cave State Park in Shubert, Nebraska – at about two o’clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time to set up camp and head back to the office for a map and our vehicle passes. (And a really cute wooden refrigerator magnet that reminded me of a Junior Ranger badge. Hmmm … this could be my version of stickers….)

We are crossing our fingers that as Paul and I hit symptom day 5 of our Covid Lite, we can make some social distancing sacrifices like riding together in the BMW that Paul caravans in with us so he and I have that vehicle in Arizona. The four of us loaded up and drove the long and winding road through the park to the Indian Cave, situated along the Missouri River.

If I’m being honest, the cave was a bit of a letdown, and more of a slightly overhanging bluff, but there were a couple of (very small) petroglyph carvings we could discern, along with some of the standard Kilroy Was Here graffiti from the ages. The hike up the bluff, to the Water View so prominently displayed in our AllTrails map, was vigorous, and equally disappointing. The undergrowth was so overgrown as to virtually obliterate the inaptly named destination. Ah, well, the exercise felt good after two days of driving.

Back at the campground, I took a brief nap during the start of Happy Hour. And, with biting flies, gnats, and mosquitoes at record levels, plus some VERY strange smelling local foliage surrounding the campground (think wafts of sour milk alternating with baby diapers), we bit the Covid Lite bullet again and dined inside tonight, together. Thoughts and prayers….

It was great to have the original gang back together, laughing and playing cribbage after dinner before an early bedtime. Tomorrow will bring another adventure as we continue to meander south by southwest.