This blog site is turning into a travelogue site since it seems the only time I’m inspired to blog is when Earl and I are traveling. This week finds us returning from the Memorial Day Weekend in Denver, Colorado.
We left Denver at six this morning headed east toward Kansas and then Missouri. Tonight we’re in a Holiday Inn Express in Topeka, having driven over five hundred miles. In between we visited the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and boyhood home in Abilene.
Normally, we drive from point A to point B, nonstop, hoping to make as much time as possible. Five hundred miles is an easy drive. But this trip we decided to try a different tactic. We agreed that if some billboard or local attraction beckoned to us, we would follow. So, on the way to Denver last week we stopped to see John Wayne’s birthplace in Winterset, Iowa, as well as some of the bridges made famous by The Bridges of Madison County. We also went to the Great Platte River Trail Archway Museum in Kearney, Nebraska, and Buffalo Bill Cody’s home in North Platte.
It’s a different approach to long distance travel, but we’ve found it most enjoyable. Tomorrow we hope to visit a college in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill once visited and is said to have coined the phrase, “iron curtain.” These two words probably don’t mean much to young people today, but Earl and I grew up in the era where they conjured a picture of brutality and Russian might. So we’re interested in seeing where they came from.
Traveling this way, meandering hither and yon, takes more time than traveling as the crow flies. But in the past week, we’ve gained a greater appreciation of the states we’ve been in and a greater appreciation of our country’s history.
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