Buffalo Bill

Kansas is all rolling prairies and fields of wildflowers, spread out farms, and occasional miles of windmills.  Being the last day of our westward trek, we spent the first part of the day in the car, determined to make it to Oakley, Kansas before lunch. First stop of the day was a gigantic statue of Buffalo Bill on the site of a great buffalo hunt.  Maybe if I had read the details more closely, I could sufficiently recall all the facts, but it was a competition between Bill and another guy.... Bill won, and over a hundred buffalo were killed that day.

Regardless of the slaughter, the statue is impressive and totally a kodak moment in the making. It's on a small hill and as you walk up, you can see fields and fields for miles in every direction.

So awesome..... at this point, the battery of my camera was almost dead.... I am not smart enough to charge it at the hotel overnight.... Also to be noted is the gift shop located on the site, where a guy sits and waits for visitors to buy books, magnets, chat about where they are headed... maybe I should choose that as a career path!

Ok, so I saw a guy choose this pose the same time we were up there and so I had to try it. Obviously being shorter, well....I don't have the same poise he did.

A fun little stop, nice that it doesn't cost anything and in a beautiful, windy setting!

Giant Bunny

In the midst of a very delightful Kentucky neighborhood full of cottages and larger houses that look straight out of an English countryside and crammed into small streets, there is a house that has carved this wooden bunny out of a tree. It took us driving in circles on the street several times before reversing our direction after which we immediately saw it!

We parked the car, took some pics and generally just enjoyed the fifteen to twenty foot bunny!

Colorado!!!!

After five days of traveling, three of them across the country, thousands of miles, a couple of hotel rooms, and a handful of delightful tourist traps, I am safely in Colorado Springs, Colorado!!!!!  For the next few days I am being hosted by the Owens family, while I search for a room to rent and settle in for the next nine months.  I am grateful for their hospitality and the orientation to the Springs that staying with them is providing! God is good!

This is the view out of the kitchen window this morning... amazing!!!!! Colorado Springs seems to me to be all houses crammed together against the backdrop of this mountain range.  I'm told half a million people live here...too many to become friends with in so little time!

Chocolate muffins for breakfast...yum, yum!

Last night PJ and I went to the Mill at New Life, the college/twenty something age service.  There were lights, a fully outfitted band, and a crowded room...I'm excited for all I can learn here.  I won't lie though, I had been so focused on just getting here, that I was not prepared for the onslaught of emotions associated with realizing I am so far from home for the next few months with only an address in hand of a bed to sleep in and my last tie to Virginia flying out in the morning.... bravery still has its moments of pure terror... :o)

Having not eaten since lunch and having gone through another time zone change, PJ and I were pretty hungry and grumpy by the end of the Mill, so we headed to Taco Bell where we ran into some people who had also come from New Life...yay!  Leaving to head to the Owens, we saw fireworks across town, so we stopped to watch.  I claimed them as "welcome to colorado springs", PJ claimed them as "happy birthday PJ", but really they were to celebrate some sports team or another... 

I am blown away by how God is providing and I know that he will be working things out in the next week and I'm excited for worship tomorrow morning at New Life and orientation on Monday.... Let's get this thing rolling!!!!!  But I am hoping for a quiet day today, just to breathe, play some guitar looking out at the mountains... enjoying the company of new friends. I'll be posting about our road trip adventures over the next week or so... we had some good times, to include a six legged cow, and the wonder tower (aka pay a guy a dollar to climb up a sketch mcgetch tower and see six states, and hold all sorts of things he claims as "antiques".

Update from Kansas

We are still at!!! The green bullet is doing magnificently and PJ and I are excited to see what tomorrow brings!

Currently, I'm sitting on a quite comfy bed in a Holiday Express in Abilene, Kansas, still wound up by an afternoon coffee which more than did its job to keep me alert through traffic. Luckily, Kansas made wide shoulders on their roads so that when a truck decides to move back over into the right lane...the unlucky small saturn can duck out of the way!

Virginia  to Kansas. Quite a long way.  Hours in the green bullet, broken up by various side adventures...a bible themed (run down) putt putt in kentucky, the arch in st. louis, cracker barrels wherever we can find them come dinnertime.  I have determined that the United States is basically laid out as follows: ocean, blue ridge mountains, prairie, rocky mountains, ocean. Granted there is some discrepancy as each area merges and I know there's some marshland and desert in the mix, but that's just to simplify the whole matter.

Tomorrow is Colorado.  A bed for a short period of time is waiting, and Monday morning orientation starts...there hasn't been too much time to think about what's coming next, only hope that I'm ready!!!

Operation Westward Expansion Days 1&2

Day 1: Springfield to Roanoke

I knew it would be hard to leave home. I have spent the last year and a half deeply immersed in family and new community.  I just didn't imagine it would feel this hard. Like a ripping through my heart, or severe indigestion...you pick.  My parents stood in the driveway waving as I drove off, I would be lying to say that my eyes were completely dry for the duration of my drive down I-81.

But tired and worn I met old college buddies, Ken and Jenny and their baby gal, Gabby for some Mexican!  Most of our time was spent standing in the parking lot afterwards, eating pretzel m&ms and watching a rainbow as it moved across the sky with a passing storm over the Roanoke Valley.

I arrived at PJ's to road plans mapping out the drive, in addition to all the possible tourist traps we can stop at and see along the way....I am so excited!!! Literally perfect! And with  a message of a place to stay until I find permanent lodgings... everything looks a bit rosier... a little movement and space and the ball starts rolling...

Day 2: Ferrum and Blacksburg

Today's journey took me down to Ferrum, my alma mater. I had in my possession a hymnal I borrowed from the chapel while a student which I had never returned. Despite suggestions and my own thoughts to mail it, it felt really important that I physically take the book back. So off I drove, and off I walked finding all the people I wanted to talk with deeply entrenched in meetings for the morning.  I opened the door of the chapel to hear singing and loud music. It immediately clicked that this was probably the current praise band practicing the week before classes. What else was there to do but settle in and listen and as soon as they reached a stopping point I was up to introduce myself, learn about them, and sing a bit with them...which they encouragingly allowed... yay!!! The chaplain stopped by and so it was one great big friend-making/catch up session, of which I am quite dearly a fan of.

Lunch and catch up with fantastic friends and professors.... I finally caught an image of myself...coming in every few months a whirlwind of energy and new plans and schemes, just as quickly gone and moving on.

I spent the evening in the VA tech studios again, this time being brave and just recording some original stuff...getting used to what it sounds like not just coming from my mouth and exploring this whole land of audio.  Thanks to Brad, you are awesome!

I didn't think much about the next band coming in to record and use the studio space unloading the car parked next to mine until one of them said, "It looks like you are about to go a long way."  To which I replied, "Well since you commented, I am, all the way to Colorado." Then commenced a conversation with four VA Tech students about what I was doing and why I was going which ended in a request by Matt (I finally asked names), to hear me sing.  I couldn't for the life of me even think of a song which prompted him to sing a little gospel first and then wait for me.... then one of other guys piped up, "some Kelly Clarkson." That was all I needed to spin off into the chorus of "Since You've Been Gone".  Then the guys couldn't help but sing along and we ended the conversation on a laughing note and their well wishes for a safe journey.

Yep, singing with strangers...I feel ready for some Colorado climate, bring it on!