Memorial Day 05-27-24

Although no member of my family died in war, my Uncle Gordan was in the Navy stationed in the Aleutians during WWII.  But as a child my family always took flowers to the cemetery for our relatives and friends buried there.  There were always lilacs, iris, daffodils, privet leaves, and Douglas fir branches.  Those are the ones I can remember, anyway.  I loved the mausoleum that has a great curving staircase and marble all around.   I decided that I would get married there and come sweeping down in my long white dress!  What did I know about weddings!

Flower field near Lompoc, CA.  The only way to see it is from the air.  I suppose this photo was taken with a drone.  Wish I could see it  -  from an airplane! 

Along a secondary road in Kansas on Memorial Day, 2011.  I was surprised to find the road lined on both sides with these large flags.  It was a rather rural area with a very small town nearby. 

 

In 2018 I was on the  road again on Memorial Day.  I was hard pressed to find an open restaurant in Yreka, CA, and ended up here at Jefferson's Roadhouse. Food was good, not many people. 

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Wordless Wednesday 08-15-18

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Looking back at quilts 05-06-18

I was talking to a friend about quilts in our past and I told her that there was only one quilt that I wish I had not sold.  It was one I made for the now defunct Kansas Art Quilters.  They accepted me as a member and I enjoyed participating in their many exhibits around Kansas/Missouri for a few years.  But I suppose they couldn't continue when members weren't willing to serve as officers and what could I do, so many miles away,  

"Color Bowls 1"  Del Thomas 2001  36"W x 34"L.

Cotton fabric, batting, thread. 

Fused, machine pieced and quilted.  

The original design inspiration was the game "Tiddly Winks" which was very popular in my childhood (c1945).  The rings are built with fused crescent shaped pieces.  Originally the little squares were going to be round, but that was too much roundness, so I changed them to squares.  The shadows in the background were accidental when I laid the white background fabric over some black fabric on my table.  Hmph - that looked cool.  

I took this one picture to send for the entry and thought I would take more when the quilt returned to me.  Although it was marked NFS there was a couple who wanted to buy it so the person in charge of the exhibit called me to see if I would sell it.  I said no.  She called me back an hour or so later asking again.  So, I said sure, I'd sell it for $700, thinking that nobody would pay that for this little quilt made by an unknown quilter.  They wrote the check!   It was gone and I have always regretted selling it.  I still like it a lot and wonder if it is still cherished or if it turned into a doggie bed.  

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Road Trip Maine - On the way home 09-05-16

Tonight I am in Limon, Colorado, at another HIE.  They are so much alike I forget where I am sometimes.  I have learned that when I leave my room I not only have to take the key cards but also the little envelope with my room number written on it.  I had to go  to the desk once to ask them what room I was in!  I checked in here early determined to work on the newsletter until it was finished.  And it is finished.  It isn't up to my usual issues, but I have had too many electronic problems on this trip.  I didn't blog last night because I couldn't stay online  and had to  keep signing in again and again.

This is "big sky" country and there isn't much to see.  You can flip through the pictures and get a sense of how lonely it is.  The speed limit is 75mph and drivers are pretty good about staying in the right lane except to pass..  of course, there is always a numbskull on the road.  When there was nobody on the road I had to try out the Lexus to see how it does at 100mph.  No wobble or weaving, it hugged the road nicely.

I was talking to a friend about the bad carpet choices in motels so I took a few pictures at HIE in Salina  where I stayed last night. 

Carpet in my room.

Carpet in hall and lobby.

One thing to look at is the giant wind farm installations.  They are everywhere.

Occasionally there is a farm, usually a substantial intrusion on the flatness.

I have been looking for a Dairy Queen, but maybe there aren't any these days.  So, I finally stopped in Flagler to find some ice cream of some kind.  Ended up at a McDonald's (where I do not usually eat) and tried an Oreo Flurry.  It was quite good, soft ice cream with chocolate "sand" mixed in.  They serve it with this weird spoon sticking out of it.  I asked the  girl what it was and she first said a straw, but even I could tell it wasn't a square straw, so I pulled it out  as she said, "Oh, I  mean a spoon." It is a strange instrument, but it worked to eat the Flurry.  Yummy.

There are very few hills or even slight rises and looking from the moving car one sees not much.

 

This is a dry corn field.  But the bump you see on the horizon to the left is a large brick church in a little town with lots of trees. 

 

Don't know what this crop is.  It is about  3-4 feet high and the tassel like  tops are a rusty red, but the large leaves are a dusty green.  There were vast fields of it near Hay, KS.

 

 

This is the most common view - flat land, flat roadway, flat blue sky.  I drove 500 miles today - all pretty much the same. .

Occasionally there is a billboard, but most are ripped apart by the wind which blows across I-70 and wears out my hands and arms from making constant corrections to the wheel. 

I'm not sure they use these grain elevators any longer.  There is one in every little town, I think.

Here are some different silos near a town.

I got off for gas and came across the I-70 diner, which is a double wide and seemed to have lots of cars parked around.

Their sign is this pink Caddy elevated about 30 feet up and can be see from the  highway.

  

Sunset from the window of my motel room.

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Road Trip to Maine - Still rolling along 08-17-16

I have to look at the calendar to  see what day of the week it is!  There is a sameness, you know.  I guess I would read someone's travel blog to see if something exciting happens.  But you may want to stop now, because nothing exciting has happened yet on this road trip.  I got off the highway in Salina, KS, to find a quilt shop.  With the help of the telephone ap "WAZE" I found the address, but there was no sign of a quilt shop.  It gave me a chance to see the sad state of downtown Salina, which is like so many downtown areas across the country.  There are boarded up windows, lots of for rent or lease signs, and nobody on the sidewalks.  Anyway, I retraced my route and got back on I-70.  I am in Independence, MO, tonight where it was 93F at 6pm and a little more humid than Colby, KS, but not bad.

There have been a number of times that I felt that I was going to drive off the edge of the earth.  Just looks like a road to nowhere. 

 

There are passing cars to look at - or cars that I am passing.

There are quite a few Wind Farms in Kansas - these are the huge turbines and they were not moving very much.

And there are trucks that pass, or, more likely, that I pass.

There are occasional clumps of cottonwood trees growing in a streambed

I had just been thinking about Ruth McDowell when I saw this off ramp sign.  Spooky.

This is my lap.  I ought to put this picture on the refrigerator door.  Or maybe on the wall over the bathroom scales.  This was an accidental picture - made me laugh.

And then I arrived  in Kansas City, MO, where the traffic signs are notoriously misleading.  Especially trying to follow I-70 over the river.

 

That white arrow that points straight up is I-70 and I carefully lined up in the center lane.  But the center lane divides and I divided the wrong way and ended up going north instead of east.  So, I got off at the next exit, went under the highway, took the ramp going back the other direction.  Over the bridge back into Kansas where I took the next off ramp and went over the highway and back on the onramp going east.  This time I got in the right lane and made it onto I-70.  I'm sure that most of you will be familiar with this exercise done somewhere in the world.  I  believe I did it once before, maybe in 2011 when I drove this route.  I had not however, done it in rush hour traffic at 5:15pm.  Not as bad as the 405 in Los Angeles, but bad enough.  

There is Kansas City, MO, on the other side of the Missouri River.  The traffic wasn't so bad until I got on the other side of downtown, then it was stop and go almost to Independence, only 17 miles inside the Missouri border. 

 

Tomorrow, Missouri and Illinois, maybe even Indiana.  Just six days left

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Home again, Home again, jiggety jog....

...or however the old nursery rhyme goes.  I won't do a blog  tonight, unless I wake up in the wee hours and can't go back to sleep.  It was a great trip (4988 miles) and I appreciate all the good friends who kept track of me and worried about me.  I'll have more trip pictures and comments over the coming week.  Love, Del-at-home

Had at least a bit of "hanging rain" every day.  This is in Kansas on US-54.

Inspiration 07-04-14

 

Near Burlingame, KS  2011

Wordless Wednesday 07-20-11

Heading Home 05-29-11

I took an entire photo card of scenery today, but got a lot of 'the inside of my purse' sort of thing.  Don't know why - not paying attention.  It was a long day from Carbondale to Liberal, Kansas.  I left Ruth Powers' at 9am and arrived at the Holiday Inn Express in Liberal at 6pm, 104F and a wind so strong I had a hard time opening my car door.  I turned the car around and then the wind ripped the door out of my hand.  As tired as I was I got in the motel pool with about ten kids and did as many exercises as I could.  There were five little girls (8 or 9 years old) who were doing cannon balls into the pool.  I laughed at myself when the thought popped up that young women didn't do such things when I was that age.  Not decorous.  I'm turning into my grandmother!   After a long shower and a delicious dinner of focaccia bread and left over beer baked chicken (thanks to Ruth and Charlies Powers) I had a little nap and started working on the pictures.  But, I fear, I am too tired to finish them.  So, I am just giving you the first couple hundred miles! 
Click pictures to enlarge.

The corn is coming up well now, though some fields are partially flooded due to the heavy rains.

When I first drove in Kansas I couldn't figure out what the yellow/black diagonal stripes mean.  They indicate a culvert or other sharp drop off along the verge of the road.   These are real country roads, narrow and 'dippy' and sometimes not in good repair.

Not too many miles from Carbondale I came to these flags whipping wildly in the wind.  It was a cemetery with a double row of flags posted for Memorial Day.  There was a single row of flags on the opposite side of the road - another cemetery.  I had to turn in and take some pictures.

Isn't this great?  The wind was from the perfect direction.

I saw a number of cemeteries along the way today and all were be-flagged, but none as much as this one.  The leaning stone on the front right was from before the Civil War. 

Hundreds of herds of cows munching in the pastures and sometimes groups of horses.  Didn't see any sheep or goats. 

 Meadows of green sprinkled with daisies.

 
I took the Kansas Turnpike toward Wichita (that is the toll ($4.50) ticket on my dash and, amazingly, I found the same Starbuck;s where I stopped four years ago.  It was a fluke, my memory was only jogged when I pulled into the parking lot.  I stopped just west of Wichita at a Do-it-yourself carwash - I just couldn't stand the road grime and baked bugs that had been collecting since I left California.  It only cost $3 in quarters and the exercise was good for me.  I was going to towel it dry, but by the time I had done the outside of the windows the wind had dried almost every drop from the body of the car. 
As I said above, I have more pictures from today's journey, but I am out of steam and need to go to bed.  I did stop in Greenburg, which had been almost obliterated by a tornado just a few days before my 2007 trip and caused a detour of all traffic north to US50.  It is a memory I am never going to forget, all that debris spread across the countryside and in the shredded trees.  There are some old buildings surviving in Greenburg, I'll show some pictures in a photo album later.   

On-the-Road to Kansas City, MO 05-27-11

Here is a view I rarely have!  I am riding in the backseat of Ruth Power's sedan and her husband Charlie is driving.  I missed the side view mirrors and the brake pedal, but Charlie is a good driver and I was comfortable.

In the past I was surprised about these layers of rock under the top layer of soil.  They show in the road cuts all along the highway. 

We were en route to the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, MO. http://www.1856.com/ It was amazing and I enjoyed it very much.  Arabia hit a submerged snag (a walnut tree) and sank in 1856.  It was found and excavated in 1990's by five local men.  The steamboat was carrying supplies up the Missouri River to the settlers all along the river up into South Dakota, so there was a little bit, or a lot, of everything needed to build homes and communities in the "wilderness".   Pictures are allowed without a flash and I took many of many different things.  I'm posting images of "sewing" things because most of those who read this Blog will appreciate them.

Every item displayed has been frozen after being removed from the ship uncovered in 45 feet of mud and silt in a cornfield which was once the path of the river.  As time and workers are available the items are cleaned and dried and some are put on display - it is somewhat like an old fashioned general store.  The guide said they have about ten more years of recovery and conservation of the "stuff" still froze.  Clockwise above starting from top left are many types of buttons including glass from Austria and printed china from the US, a bowl metal buttons and buckles, half of a bowl of many sizes of needles, thimbles, hat pins, ink bottles (don't know about the taller bottle), gold pen holders (the old fashioned nibs fit in one end and were dipped into the ink bottles).   

Here is a closer view of the buttons in the bowl at top left. 

Of course, those people out on the prairies needed hats and there were stacks and stacks of them.  All have been frozen, thawed, dried, cleaned and reshaped.   As a be-hatted person I can appreciate this!

There were many containers of beads to use as trade with the native Americans and for ladies decorating hats (and quilts?).  This display was about the other items the natives wanted in trade.

We were there for about 2-1/2 hours and I could have looked for several more hours, I think.  But I was about dead on my feet and so were Ruth and Charlie.  We refreshed with some ice cream and headed back to Carbondale, KS, about an hour and 20 minute drive today.   Just a few sprinkles of rain along the way.

 

Of course, we had to visit the facilities.  And I had to take a picture of this cute little soap dispenser - and myself in the mirror.  Do I look tired?  I am exhausted tonight and am going to bed as soon as I post this Blog.  It is only 10:30pm!