Counting Turtles on the Railroad Tracks

15 dead ones, 3 that Troy was able to save. Somehow they crawl under the rails, where there is a hole in the rocks surrounding them big enough for a turtle to crawl through, and are unable to climb back over the rails to get out. Before they starve, I guess. After you see a few it's kind of sad. Troy felt good to be able to save a few. But we weren't out to save the turtles. We were out to hike the rails for the weekend. Backpacks for overnight, building a fire and camping under the trestles. For real!

Troy has been wanting to do this for a while and was waiting for a good weather weekend. With one coming up and no other plans that couldn't be broken, I asked him on Wednesday what he thought about trying for this weekend. He was all for it, but needed to order a water purifier because packing bottles of water isn't feasible, and ours broke on a similar trip last year. (At a muddy lake, where we ended up boiling the mucky lake water to drink. ew.) So I express ordered one, but as of 3:30 Friday afternoon it hadn't been delivered. So I wasn't sure we were going to be able to go after all. Until the UPS guy showed up at 4:30 and it was a go!

Kalyn had plans for the weekend, and Alina always has places to stay, but I hadn't talked to them about what our plans were. I thought they might worry, think it was really weird. Turns out Alina just flat out didn't care and Kalyn didn't think a thing when we asked her to drive us to Arcadia with our gear and drop us off at the railroad tracks and wait for our call in a couple days to pick us up somewhere. They are used to our quirky ways.

So Kalyn dropped us off at the railroad tracks and we took off hiking. It was already evening, so we hiked, I'm guessing 3-4 miles when we came to an old trestle, 1926 carved in the concrete support, and decided to camp there. We gathered wood and dried grass and had a bit of a worry when Troy couldn't seem to get a fire going, but he worked it out, like always. And then we heard a train coming and I got pretty excited about experiencing it from below the trestle in the dark. And it was very cool! I remember saying "wow!". The trains go much faster than I expected out there, so it's pretty amazing to watch the cars just whiz by and feel the wind produced by the train, itself. The thunderous sound of the train on the rails above and the trembling ground beneath the trestle is intimidating and awesome. And the lights under the engines at night are eerie, as is the melancholy moan as the train races away. So we slept there in our sleeping bags, looking up at the stars and listening to tree frogs and also cows bawling after the trains barrel through. Excellent weather to be out there in the open.

 The next morning we used our new water purifier as we got water out the the creek. We think we were on Cox's Creek. We ate and took off hiking again. Another old trestle, beautiful weather and pretty scenery there in the country north of Arcadia. But we hit Garland around 10:30, which is kind of where we tentatively planned to end our trip. Of course we decided to continue on with the whole day ahead of us. So on we trekked.

Notes to selves:
Thicker soled, more substantial shoes would have been nice considering the loose rocks and unevenly spaced railroad ties we were hiking on.

Never leave on this kind of camping trip without your pan  with a handle to cook over the fire in. You will get burned without a handle. (ask Troy)

Troy's backpack is REALLY heavy. (that's more of a whine than a helpful note, though I could have probably carried some of those military ready to eat meals in my pack)

We stopped at one point to rest a bit and ended up taking naps right there on the rocks beside the tracks. We hiked a total of 18 miles, best as I can figure, before we finally found ourselves in Fort Scott, in the industrial park. We realized there wouldn't be any place to camp there, we were tired and it was late afternoon, and there were hotels very nearby. The first one we tried to check into had no vacancies (Pioneer Harvest Festival???) so we asked the desk clerk what else in town there was available. She said "Well, it just depends on what you're looking for." We thought it was amusing that she thought we looked at all picky. I had slept on jagged rocks earlier in the day!

We got a room in the hotel next to McDonalds, which was just fine. A shower felt really good. We walked across the street to eat at Long John Silvers and Troy says he felt really bad about feeding ourselves such greasy, fattening food after the day we spent walking. I didn't mind at all. Truthfully, I crawled into bed about 6:00 that evening and might as well have gone to sleep. We watched tv a little, but we were worn out! 

Kalyn picked us up the next morning with the same unflappable demeanor she had when she dropped us off. She calls these less than normal excursions of ours a mid-life crisis, but Troy explained to her that we have just been waiting for her to get old enough to drive so we could have someone to pick us up after our adventures!

                                           That's me with my backpack.

Autumn Comfort

The part of the world where I live, Kansas, has been dry, dry, crispy dry the past few months. But yesterday we were graced with a long, soul soothing, soaking rain. This afternoon I took off on a drive in the country by myself to check out nature's reaction. I think nature is satisfied today. Anyway, that's the vibe I get.