June 2, 2009

Travel and Nostalgia

We left the lovely Iola Elks lake after 8:00 and headed east.  Only real goal for the day other than travel was Wichita, the place we spent the first four years of our marriage.  We got there in late morning and quickly located our first home.  We lived in a basement apartment under a house in a quiet older neighborhood.  It is all still there.  Same quiet neighborhood, same house unchanged except for some landscaping.  We parked the carbus and took a few pictures and then did a bit of reminiscing. 

Front of house.  Appears to be occupied by family with small kids.

 

This is back of house.  Entrance to our basement apartment was around corner just to right of small window in center of picture.

Pink spot is window in door to basement.

Ground level windows were what we had for light.   As you can see we were pretty much under ground.  During tornado warnings our landlords would visit :).

 

 

When we lived there, there was a Dairy Queen four and a half blocks away.  When Sue was pregnant with Ken, several times a week we would walk by the DQ as part of the exercise thing.  We would each get a small cone to eat on our way home.  It has been over 40 years but the little Dairy Queen is still there.  We walked the few blocks, took some pictures, and each got a cone to eat as we walked back.

The older parts of Wichita are pretty much the same but the city has grown a great deal and is very busy.  There used to be one cross town highway and some county roads leading north and south.  Now there are three or four freeways and several expressways crisscrossing the city.  We found a Sam’s Club, got gas, and got outa Dodge.  Actually we headed toward Dodge (City).  As we headed west the sky got darker and darker.  For a while it looked like we would go around the weather but about ten miles east of Dodge City it hit.  Rain so heavy that wipers don’t work and streets are flooded in minutes.  We pulled over for a few minutes and then crept along as things lightened up some.  We had rain and wind for the next two hours.  When we reached the campground we were totally out of any rain and almost had clearing skies.  The camp owner was actually hoping that it would rain as they had not had any for some time.  He got his wish, it is raining now.