For the first adventure with my family, my loving wife (then girlfriend) rode in my parents' Explorer from Charlotte, NC to Little Rock, AR. My younger brother and I were at National Camping School for the BSA and would rendezvous with Allie, mom, dad, and Skeezer in Little Rock the next day (Friday). On Saturday morning we all got up and drove from Little Rock to Dodge City, KS. On the way to Dodge, we stopped in Greensburg and looked at the town which was completely destroyed in a EF5 tornado.
I'm sure everyone is wondering why on Earth would anyone want to spend time in Kansas, with it being mind-numbingly flat and a huge lack of things to do. All of that aside, my great-grandparents were some of the founding citizens of the town of Windhorst, just outside of Dodge City. We went out there for a family reunion and a school reunion for anyone who attended the school in Windhorst. My grandma was the last of our family to attend the school and coincidently both reunions fell on the same day, so we started at one and then went to the next. The old school burned down some time ago, but they had the reunion/cookout inside the old foundation of the school. They also unveiled a marble monument with all of the graduates of the Windhorst School. Down the road from the school is the cemetary for the town, and I'm pretty much related by blood or marriage to every person buried inside those gates. Allie was a trooper and hung out with my crazy family for the entire weekend and didn't complain once! If I didn't know by that point, that would have been the sure-fire sign that she was a keeper! To this day, when we pass a car on the highway with Kansas plates or see the Jayhawks on tv, I'll catch Allie sayin' "I miss Kansas."
