pink = where we went
Kansas
Nebraska
During my then-11-year-old son’s spring break, our family went on a three-week road trip in a rented RV through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
Before our road trip, I had been in Missouri doing a residency and the day before had driven across the state to Kansas City, where I returned my rental car and then picked up Anna and Asher at the airport. They had gotten up very early in the morning for their flight. We took a Lyft to a muddy storage lot in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, where we picked up our RV.
Anna nor I had ever driven an RV. We knew nothing about RVs. The lady at the storage lot place went very quickly through not everything we would need to know about our RV. Something about propane, something something sewage empty, something make sure you don’t ever turn this off. We did not absorb much of what she said.
We sat in the RV in the muddy storage lot and ate lunch.
We decided I would drive.
After we’d driven a block away from the parking lot, water fell on me from the ceiling. It was startling and I nearly drove into a ditch. It happened again a block later. We hoped it was just rain that had gathered in an awkward place in the skylight. It didn’t happen again, so we guessed that’s what it was.
Our maiden voyage was to Target, which thankfully had a big enough parking lot to steer our ship safely to shore without doing damage. Asher seemed to not be feeling great (we thought he was just tired from getting up early) and curled up in the bottom of the vast Target cart. Our plan was to cook and eat most meals in the RV. We bought some Amy’s frozen dinners and toilet paper and a lot of other stuff.
We drove to our campground - the KOA in Lawrence, Kansas. Anna delivered the various hoses and cords from the bowels of the RV and the KOA manager kindly showed us how to hook things up. Orange pink sunlight made fields glow and I felt optimistic about our journey to come.
Above waist-level the RV was equipped with many cubbies with doors that latched closed and we organized everything into them - our clothes in the cubbies above our bed, Asher’s collection of books in the one above the door. We made our beds and ate our Amy’s frozen dinners and drank beer. Asher didn’t want much of his pizza, which was odd. I settled into low grade anxiety that he was sick.
Trains passed in the night and the heater came on and off. In the morning it became clear that Asher had a stomach bug. He would throw up or have diarrhea and then wail, “I want to go HOME!” I had a panic attack. Clothes were thrown away. Road Trip in the RV Day 1!
Later in the morning Asher seemed to be feeling a little better and even ate some frozen blueberries. We thought maybe the stomach bug was over and looked at maps.
We got acquainted with our RV. The wheeze of the water pump. The shift of every item in every cubby and the slam of the toilet lid when we started driving again. The rattle and crash of every pot and pan and piece of silverware as we turned corners.
We decided I would do all the driving and Anna would do all the hook-ups for water, electricity and sewer.
Asher loves history and particularly the Civil Rights Movement and so we drove eagerly to Topeka to visit the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. We were sad to find the old elementary school closed even though it was supposed to be open. So we walked on the grounds, read the outdoor educational signage, and enjoyed the nearby historical mural that was colorful underneath a bright blue sky.
Asher’s favorite thing to do is go to the library, and he is fond of predictable things happening, so we vowed to go to one library every day we could, in every state we visited. The Topeka public library set the bar high. It was spacious and colorful and smelled of teenagers and there were many tables with kids reading. Asher found some books and sprawled out in the middle of an aisle, Anna read, and I wrote.
That night we stayed at an RV campground in Wamego. The stomach bug returned for the night. More misery and screaming to go home. A bathmat was thrown away. We decided Asher will sleep in the bed with Anna next to the bathroom and I will sleep in the bed above the front seats.
The lady at the RV campground was unhappy with us in the morning because we left their hose connected to our water hookup overnight. But people at the other campground said that’s what you always do so we were confused.
We went to the store and bought cleaner and more paper towels and laundry detergent.
Leading up to this trip, Asher was most excited for us to visit the OZ Museum in Wamego, Kansas. This new morning, he seemed to be feeling better (again) so we went. We parked a block away from the museum near a park. Online we’d learned that the town of Wamego has little dog Toto sculptures of different themes located around the city and we thought some must be in this park. Sure enough, we found a gingham Toto, an American flag Toto, and an emerald green Toto. We walked on a well-worn yellow brick road to the museum, which is on the little town’s main street.
The museum was a spirited shrine to L. Frank Baum, his books and the movie, and featured humble artifacts lovingly displayed alongside details about his life. We learned that Baum was a feminist and greatly admired his mother-in-law, Matilda Josyln Gage, who co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Baum said Gage was “in the first rank amongst the thinkers of our age.” Asher and I had been reading the Oz books together and realized that all of the main heroes and villains are women. Unexpected gold nugget in Kansas!
We drove under bright sunny skies through very gently rolling hills of oat-colored prairie into Nebraska.
Our first stop in Nebraska was in Beatrice at the Homestead National Monument. Consisting of an education center and a historic cabin situated in a desolately windy tallgrass prairie, the monument commemorates the Homestead Act of 1862, whereby white settlers and formerly enslaved men and women were invited by the U.S. government to claim “free” land. On July 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln stated the purpose of the Homestead Act was "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." Of course “men,” “all,” and “everyone” did not include the Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, and Pawnee Indians already living on this land.
Well-designed graphics told the story of the rugged pioneers. Dust danced in the sun and settled on plastic corn on the cob that laid rigid in blonde baskets on the carpet. A friendly young ranger gave Asher a workbook he could fill out while exploring the center.
That night we stayed at Prairie Oasis campground in Henderson, Nebraska. So far we had not had many fellow RV campers, and the campgrounds had been surrounded by expansive farmland, so we were getting used to a feeling of being nearly alone in vast land and sky.
The woman running the campground was friendly and brought us three freshly baked cinnamon muffins! She told me she had never been into Lincoln, which is sixty miles east. She’s originally from Colorado, and when she travels she always goes west. She recommended that we check out the Stuhr Museum. Anna went to her office twice and I went once while we were there and we encountered a mystery. There was a little wooden sign on a bookshelf that one day said JESUS and another day just said abstract symbols. We wondered, did this sign have two sides - one side with JESUS and the other with abstract symbols - and she could flip it around depending on her mood? If so, what mood elicited the abstract symbols? Or maybe she flipped it depending on who was coming in the door? Would she be going for assimilation or evangelism? Would we, the queers from Seattle, get JESUS or abstraction? Nearly a year later, I was driven enough to google “Jesus wooden sign two sides abstract symbols” and discovered that there is a market for JESUS optical illusion signs. Well done, crafty Christian puzzlers!
We decided to go to the Stuhr Museum even though it was in the opposite direction from Lincoln, where we were heading. We went inside and met Linda, who sold us our tickets. I asked if there was anywhere between here and Lincoln she thought we should go. It was hard for her to think of a place. She asked what we were doing there and I told her about my project. It turned out there was a huge crane migration happening right then! She couldn’t believe we were in southeast Nebraska and had no idea about the crane migration. Some stuffed animal cranes sat next to her. The two adult stuffed animal cranes had different markings and she said one was the more common and one was rare. She told us about a field nearby that would surely have cranes visiting. She seemed like she was thinking she was smelling something fishy about my being there and so in the spirit of full-disclosure I gave her a postcard with my website on it.
Anna and Asher and I made our way through the museum, marveling at relics of early American life. On our way out, I called out goodbye to Linda and she and another lady said in a knowing way, “Have an interesting time!” We wondered if she had been looking at my website while we were looking at early 1900’s electric devices that vibrated human flesh.
On our way to Lincoln we tried to find the field she told us about but we didn’t see any cranes. It is very possible that we got the wrong field.
Our first and only stop in Lincoln, aside from the KOA that evening, was the public library. We were so happy to see this sign in the door!
Asher gathered some books and laid down in the middle of an aisle. The ritual is the same no matter the geographic location.
The stomach bug seemed to still be coming and going. At that night’s KOA in Gretna I did lots of laundry. The campground was run by a family with several little kids, the oldest of whom was zipping around in a golf cart. He was maybe 7 and plowed into a curb. He jumped out and replaced the rockery with such adeptness I wondered if this happened often. Asher made friends with the kids quickly and they bounced on a giant puffy mound into the sunset. In the morning we drove towards Iowa.
