The girls were awake by 4:45am, and they did not go back to sleep. Constantly shifting around in the bed and “whispering” at each other. Poking, provoking, all the wonderful things that they do to keep us awake. Breakfast wasn’t available until 6am, so we stayed in bed until then, but I didn’t sleep again. Not sure if Jada did either. Breakfast was pretty good. Good mix of things, and the eggs were more tasty than the last place. They even had fresh strawberries. We didn’t get on the road until 8am today since we only had a 3 hour drive. Just wish we could have actually slept in.
We were within a mile of Oklahoma before we veered off into Kansas. On the highway we were on (44west, I think), it runs straight at the corner of the 3 states. We got off on a smaller 2 lane highway like highway 39 in Illinois that we used to take to Rockford when I was little. Lots of straight roads with little rollers. We arrived at the location of the Ingalls’ homestead in the Osage Indian territory just 8 miles south of Independence, KS at 11:12pm. It was already 95 degrees when we arrived. My camera fogged up again after taking it out of the car. It eventually cleared up after I left the cap off for a while. There really wasn’t a lot to see there. No original sites, except for what they’re pretty sure was the well that Pa dug first thing. They had a replica of what their cabin looked like along with a small post office that sprang up a year after the Ingalls left the site. The post office was moved from a couple miles down the road from a place called Wayside. There was a nature walk to the creek near the house, but since it was 95 degrees, and we weren’t really feeling like a hike, we skipped that. We did sit in the shade of a tree at a picnic table to eat our sandwiches for lunch. I called the hotel in Independence to ask if we could cancel for tonight since it was only noon, and we didn’t have anything else to do. They said I needed 24 hours cancellation notice.
We drove to the hotel anyway to see if they had any rooms available to settle in yet, and they didn’t. We took a map of area attractions to look at. Jada wanted to push on to Wichita, KS to decrease our drive tomorrow. I took the cancellation policy at face value, and I was ok not driving along. This was a hotel with non-smoking rooms available, but there was the stench of stale cigarettes in the air with the girls didn’t like at all. I found a few options to go check out in the city since there wasn’t a pool at the hotel. Jada went and asked at the desk again to see if we could cancel since we’d like to push on further today since she was ready to pay for this room as well as one in Wichita just so we wouldn’t stay there. They said that they could since they had the credit card number. There had been some problem with it earlier since it was an internet booking or something. I don’t understand the details, but as long as we didn’t have to pay for a room we weren’t going to be in. I was able to secure a room in a Hampton in Wichita, so we pushed off at about 1pm.
It was another 2 hour drive in the car, but it wasn’t too bad. The roads were quite good, even though they were 2 lanes. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but it was really windy blowing south to north. We arrived in Wichita at 3pm, and we were able to check in. The hotel seemed fairly new. We got changed into swim suits since the girls had been so well behaved after the dreadful early morning. We swam for an hour. I even swam this time. Then we chose a restaurant from the Garmin (oh, that reminds me of the joke that was made on the way into town as we passed an Arby’s, Jada was reminded of the joke “what’s a pirate’s favorite restaurant?” “Arrrrrby’s” So Phoebe ran with that for a while and started just accentuating the end of the first syllable of any name (our favorite was Quizzzzzzno’s and Hammmmpton) until she finally got it with Tarrrrrget and Worrrrrld Maaarrrrrket which were right next to the hotel.) We went to dinner at restaurant called Famous Dave’s BBQ. It was less than a mile away. It was really good. Lots of food though. We are stuffed. It was 100 degrees out when we went for dinner.
Back to the hotel at 6pm, and Jada started some laundry before hitting the fitness center. This was back to the good level of equipment with weights and cardio equipment. The girls took their usual 30 to 50 minutes to fall asleep, but I went down to wait for the laundry to finish while Jada took her shower. Then we caught up on some TV on Hulu before calling it a night. We’ll be writing from Colorado tomorrow, and we’ll be there for several days.