Tuesday, July 8 - Day 12: And Now for the Farm Report....

This morning is the first day on the trip I set an alarm to wake me up.  I wanted to get an early start as I had about a 6 hour ride in front of me and I wanted to spend as much time with my daughter Trisha as I could today.  What I wasn't planning on was having the fire alarm to start beeping at 1:15 a.m. due to a low battery.  I got up and took down the smoke alarm and removed the battery to silence it.  It took a while, but I did finally fall back a sleep.  At 4:50 a.m. (Colorado time), the alarm went off.  Sunrise was at 5:30.  I looked out the window and saw the parking lot was a little wet from the overnight rain.  I looked at the weather radar and it looked like the last of the rain was just moving out of the area.  It looked like if I was on the road by 5:30, I should be able to be behind the rain and have a good ride.  I left the hotel on schedule and went across the road to fill up with gas before departing.  There are not a lot of small town gas stations that are as busy as this one was this morning!  I looked like everyone was "up and at it" early today.  30 minutes later I was in Kansas.  Soon there after I lost 1 hour as I cross back into the Central Time Zone.  All was going according to plan.  One gas stop, a little construction, and 375 miles later, I was in Manhattan Kansas, my destination for the day around 12:30.

And now for the farm report.  The key word is variable.  Some places the corn looks very good and is ready to tassel.  In other places, the corn was only 4 - 6" tall.  The similar variation was seen in the bean crop.  It looks like crops that got planted early are doing well, other crops were planted very late and have a lot of catching up to do.  There is also some land (maybe 10%) that was not planted at all.  The wheat harvest is progressing; I would estimate about 80% of the wheat was harvested so far.  A few of the wheat fields had already been worked up and where black already.  I saw very few flooded fields coming across Colorado and Kansas; much different that what is saw in Minnesota and South Dakota.

I spent the afternoon visiting with Trisha (I got to see the lab where she spends much of her time) and playing with the dogs (Einstein and Ros).  We even took the dogs to the lake to go swimming.  Here are pictures of the Grand Doggies!  They are both Pembroke Welsh Corgis.  Ros (the one on the left) is a 2 year old female.  Her older brother is Einstein, he is 5 years old.

Tomorrow is my final leg of the journey that will bring me back home.

I have always been very lucky on how these trips work out.  Yes I do my planning and organizing before I go, but things always fall in place.  I feel/know that someone who is much greater than I is watching over me and guiding me on these adventures.  I am very grateful for his presence.

Here is the route I took today.