Stuck in Kansas

I meant to leave work around 2:00pm on Monday to drive to St. Marys, Kansas. I didn’t leave until 4:00pm. This meant that almost half of my trip out here was in the dark. I stopped at a rest area around midnight in Paducah, Ky and slept for a couple of hours. I woke up around 2:00 in the morning and decided to drive a little farther. I drove for another hour and decided I was still too sleepy to continue driving so I found another rest area and slept until around 7:00am.

At this point I was just outside of Missouri. It had started raining a little during the night and I was alternating between driving in a steady rain and mist. St. Louis was overcast. I could barely make out the arch.

I kept driving through St. Louis and found a McDonald’s about thirty minutes to the west of St. Louis to pick up a couple of sausage biscuits and a large cup of coffee. I was hoping to see something worth snapping pictures of in Missouri but it was fairly desolate between St. Louis and Kansas City. Little did I know that I had no idea what desolation was at that point in time.

Rain continued across Missouri and began drying up just before I reached Kansas City. I continued to make good time until I reached the Kansas border. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to pay a toll when I had a perfectly good GPS that I knew would help me find my way around it. Unfortunately there was one turn that wasn’t real clear on the GPS and I got off on some very rural backroads.

I was beginning to really get a sense of desolation that I had never before appreciated. The country side was empty except for the remains of a corn harvest and the occassional farm house. I was enjoying the scenery and seemed to still be on schedule to reach my work site before quitting time. Suddenly I missed a turn and my GPS began recalculating. It told me to take a left at the next gravel road. Then it told me to make a right at a road that didn’t have much gravel on it. The sign said it was an unmaintained road and that I should travel at my own risk. It didn’t look that bad.

It was that bad. I was on Arn Rd. and suppose to make a left at the top of the hill at 90th St. I was fishtailing some going up the road but I didn’t think much about it until I tried to make the turn at 90th St. I kept going stratight no matter how hard I turned. I attempted to back up and turn around but that only managed to get me stuck sideways in the road. After about half an hour of trying to get turned around I called AAA.

About 45 minutes later the wrecker showed up from Topeka. He stopped where I turned in and I saw the driver begin walking up the road to me. I started walking toward him. This wasn’t easy because this mud was a very sticky and slick mud. I didn’t mire up, I just had mud cake to my shoes.

He wasn’t going to bring his wrecker up that road and get it stuck. He did try to push me to help me get my truck straight. We did that but I was facing the wrong direction. That’s fine I can back up almost as good as I can drive forward. The pitch of the road made it impossible, though for me to keep off the side of the road.

It was almost dark now. He agreed to give me a ride to town or to a farmhouse. I took him up on the offer and he drove me about three miles from my car when I saw an old farm house with the lights on and some heavy equipment in the front yard. We pulled up in the driveway and I spoke to a young girl there, maybe seventeen years old, and she called her brothers. She was one of a family of twelve children. Her two younger sisters were running around the house and she was preparing the evening meal.

Her brothers showed up on four wheelers, grabbed some chain and told me to hop on. They had already scoped out my truck and they thought they had a plan. It turns out it was a fairly good plan. Their older brother showed up with a four wheel drive truck and managed to get me pulled to the road I had tried to turn on to.

I still couldn’t get turned around so one of the other brothers hooked a chain to my trailer hitch and dragged the back of my truck around. This allowed me to get turned around but I still wasn’t going anywhere. I began to worry.

The third brother then hooked his four wheeler to the front of my truck and helped me stay in the middle of the road until we got to a place where there was actually some gravel and I was able to get straight long enough to drive myself back down the road.

I asked the young men how much I owed them. Nothing. They were having fun. I got their address and the name of their church. When I get home I’ll do something nice for them.

I was looking for some adventure on this trip and that’s why I decided to drive out here. I thought the excitement would be on the drive home. I also thought I’d be on that drive home today. I’m here for another week. So far I’ve managed to get lost with almost no gas left in the tank, almost hit a deer and had a flat tire. I’ll talk about those things later. I have a few more pictures to post also.