Things In Kansas

We are still in Kansas out on the prairie and it’s always the weather out here. Hot, cold,wind blowing. When we left our boat in the Caribbean it was raining and hot. Out here it’s dry and hot with a long spell of hundred plus degrees days with no rain. In reading old books about the struggles of the first people moving out here it always was about water.

Water

There is a farmer out here that has a hand dug well that never goes dry and the water is good. Most water out here has something wrong with it or at the lest taste bad. This well has been here a long time and at some time was used by a lot of people in time of dry weather.

A good well. Steam trains got water here in the past.

Remember we are just below Hays, Kansas and just above Dodge City, Kansas. This is old wild west cowboy country. Gun fights and cattle drives. There are some monuments to the wild west here but a lot of how it was is still here in a way. The well for the train that doesn’t run through here anymore is still here in this town we live in out here and the Coop sells water to the farmers out of it. Population 35 but only about half that live here. We think it’s closer to 18 people here most of the time. Remember the train was a steam train and needed lots of water.

Train Stop:

Just south of us is and old train stop where people could get off the train and spend a night in a room and eat in a restaurant. It’s still there but falling in. You can see it had glamour in it’s day. Traveling by train was first class at one time. With it being so dry out here and it happens some years all the wild creatures here need water and there is very few trees. If you like looking for wild things look for threes and any water. Going to town a few days back the sky was clear and 105F. Along the road where there is a few trees there was lots of deer just stand there staying cool guess. Remember going to town here it’s 42 miles to a real town. 18 miles to a town with a grocery store, an auto parts, a couple of convenience stores and a hardware store that never has what you need. I can only imagine how barren this place was when the west was wild. State road are paved, but county roads are all dirt. All the streets in this town are still dirt. One of the biggest surprises is very few horses but here you can buy a ATV that can cost up to twenty thousand dollars equipped with any thing your truck has. Want to go on a cheap date. We were at a farm near by, the farmer’s son came to the house from the barn in a ATV when a new truck came in and a very pretty young girl jumped out and left with the boy in the ATV laughing. The farmer looked at us and said, “Cheap date they are checking on the cows this afternoon after school.” Maybe to some people that would not be a date to look forward too but for people like Pam and I that can only be a dream now. We been married now 58 years and looking back I think all the traveling living on old sailboats and living some what off the grid is the freedom of it. You can definitely feel the freedom living out here. Here while back we were in the town of Hoistington when a man pulling a old car on what looked like home made trailer with a truck when the truck just cut off. He was blocking traffic and no one was blowing their horn. We ask if we could help he said, “You got a chain?” We was pulling him in our old truck when a cop showed up he said. You got this. I said, “Yes.” He went on. Like I said. There is a freedom you can feel out here. Out here trying to get a new knee replacement. Trying to get it done as an out patient. Go in get it done and back home the same day. Remember this is cowboy country. We will know soon. The adventure goes on.

The Tempertures:

We lelf the spare tire in the back of the ’72 Chevy. When we returned here we discovered with the tempertures of 100F to 106F for severial days it had come apart from the heat. It still has air in it. But no good for a spare any more.

No Good Any More.

 

 

 

Trip to USA from Guatemala

ON The Road Again, Traveling

We are back in the US in Kansas and it was as it usually is with us traveling with very little money a hard trip. We stared out in the Rio Dulce river near the coast in Guatemala where our old home built sailboat is hopefully tied to a dock there. A friend took us to town an the bus station in her dinky. Remember we live in a water world there in the Western Caribbean. Best way to get around is by boat. On the bus at 8:00 in the morning. A little after 3:00 in the afternoon we were off the bus in a cab headed to our hotel room in Guatemala City. There we pay about 20 US more to stay in a nice room on the promenade street.

Busy Street

They don’t allow cars on this street and it’s full of street entertainers and street vendors and it ends in a large park. Everything you need in walking distance. There in the afternoon we played tourist and walked the street eating street food.

Fryed bananas, very good

Guatemalan Lady selling her textiles.

Veggie Market

     Buying more junk. The next morning another cab to the airport. Check out time 11am. Sitting In Airport

Flight not leaving till 8pm just setting in an airport. Landing in Florida after midnight before getting to another motel room. Rode the bus to our room bus driver no help, using a drunk women advice we got off in the wrong stop and had to walk 3 blocks back. Pam really was not happy. Blaming me for not listening to her and taking the drunks women advice. Next day check out at 11am, plane leaving at 8pm in the after noon more, setting in an airport. Flying on, time change gaining and hour landing in Kansas City MO on the ground at 10:30 now 5 more hours drive to our little house in the big city of Galatia, Kansas, population 35. We think there are maybe 11 people living with-in this little town here now. Sleep give me sleep, and we did.

Speaking Out

I try to never do politics are religion but this is important to me. A women was there in a wheel chair being pushed around in the airport as we walk in a line back and forth to get to check in telling people she was going back to Guatemala with lots of Guatemalans there with some that can speak English. She was saying she didn’t have much money but she was going back with as big a bag as she could carry of rubber bands to castrate dogs. That the people there were sorry people letting their dogs have puppies like they do. Pam was trying to make me hush when I said really loud. “I love Guatemala.” Then I said, “Me amor Guatemala.” Everyone was agreeing with me smiling and laughing when she said, “Who are you?” I said, “No one as important as you but I work with these people some going back in these hill and jungle working for the charity Pass It On, putting solar panels in school and clinics and I don’t know where you have been but you can’t come down here and castrate people’s dog in another country because you seen some dog on the street with puppies. She stared going off about how these people need to do better. I said, “Mind your on business.” The point a want to make is, you see people living in small rooms packed together. They’re happy living that way. They been living that way forever. You see one drunk on the street lying on the sidewalk it don’t mean this is a town of drunks. If you’re traveling don’t be an ugly American. Leave it the way you found it and leave people you don’t see as your equal alone. You see people as not your equal and it brothers you then go back where you came from. Telling them how great you are won’t empress them. You trying to tell them “how to live” won’t make you superior to them just because you think you are. Wearing your “speed-dos” with your old long gray hair pulled back in a pony tail in a bank won’t get you any respect ether. Then you’re mad because they tell you to go get some clothes on. Travel with respect and see the world as it is “not” the way you think you can make them see how you live as you travel in their country. I do love these foreign countries and love seeing it as it is. I even enjoyed talking to the drunk women back in the US that didn’t have enough money to ride the bus so I paid her fair before the bus driver threw her off. It was late at night and two dollars less in our pocket won’t hurt us. Leaving her standing at the air port was bothering me. Safe travels. The adventure of life goes on. We are up here trying to promote our book we just published and doing some more art shows. The book is available at Amazon Kindle Books (Little Lies by Timothy C Pennington) and the money is going to a good cause. Be cause we need the money to keep on traveling. If you read the book you may see Pam and I have always seen the world with both eyes open not with what we are told to see. Love it or leave it but be respectful of others where ever you are. Leave a clean wake as you sail through life and take time to smell the roses. Maybe even watching an old dog raising her puppies on the mean streets of a city has beauty.

A new friend we made before leaving the Rio. We had lunch with him.