1 Apr 2023 - Arrived at Kansas City West / Lawrence KOA Holiday Campground

 1 Apr 2023

No April Fool's joke! We have arrived at our first campground out on the road on our 2023 RV trip.  It has been quite the journey leading up to this arrival, and I apologize for not publishing an update since 5 January.  

We got the RV out of storage on Sunday 5 March and took it to the dealership for it's annual checkup and some preventive maintenance.  The dealership finished their work in just a few days but we left it there until 17 March and then towed it to Griff's RV Park near Ankeny.  We use that campground to reload it with all the stuff we remove during the winter and get it ready to go on our trip.  That way we can take our time, and we have power, water and sewer connection so we can test all the systems to ensure it is ready to go.  This year Mother Nature made sure we knew who was really in-charge!  We had freezing temperatures that prevented the unwinterizing until the last few days.  

We moved into the RV to sleep on Wednesday 29 March and stayed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, and it was cold outside at night.  I unwinterized on Wednesday which involved flushing the antifreeze from the water system. Doreen was busy inside getting everything arranged and organized.  Then we must make sure the system does not freeze or we risk pipes and valves bursting.  So at night we run the furnace which blows warm air inside the coach and into the "underbelly" area where the water pipes run.  Everything worked as planned and using a couple ceramic tower heaters and the living room fireplace, we stayed very comfortable!

Thursday we planned to go out to eat with our son Dan and his family to celebrate his promotion to Deputy Fire Chief.  Little did we know Dan and our two other children, Jennifer from Battle Creek MI and her daughter Lindsey, and Michelle and her son Jon from Oak Creek WI, conspired to surprise the heck out of us and show up at the restaurant!  So what a fantastic night!  We all attended Dan's promotion ceremony on Friday before we left this morning.  

So needless to say we are so grateful we were still home for our son's promotion and to see our daughter's and most of our grand kids before we launched out this morning.

Back to Mother Nature.  She had to again make sure we all knew who was in charge as a whole barrage of nasty weather came through during Dan's ceremony and through the night.  Our grandson Calvin, who is a meteorologist in the making, was tracking the storms on his iPad during our son's ceremony!  

Fortunately we avoided the tornados, but the winds were ferocious which delayed our departure this morning.  This is a display from the weather device I have on our RV:

We stayed in touch with Calvin and closely monitored the weather until mid-morning when the winds subsided a bit, and we took off.  The good news is the delay in departure allowed us to see Calvin's Pinewood Derby car race via Facebook live feed!  Calvin came over a couple weeks ago and in my workshop he crafted a unique design - the hotdog-mobile!  It was a lot of fun working with him and my power tools on his design.  He took first place in creativity and second place as fastest car!!

We pulled out this morning at 10:52 hrs and headed southbound on I-35 towards Kansas City.  We had the wind at our back, so the fuel mileage should look good when we fill tomorrow.  We arrived at the KOA Campground in Lawrence KS at 1534 hrs after traveling 245 miles.  We are only here two nights and then we move on to Wichita KS for three nights.  

We arrived to beautiful blue skies and warm temps which was very welcome.  It is nice to be on the road again!  Tomorrow we plan to cruise Lawrence, refuel the truck and watch the Iowa Hawkeye's girls basketball team beat LSU for the National Championship!!