Back on the road again... Kansas

We fled the fires and smoke today and finally got some sunshine and fresh air for the first time in almost a week.

I booked these flights over a week ago, before the fires in Oregon started. We discussed changing our travel plans, especially as Oregon went to Level 2 evacuation status on Thursday (be packed and ready to leave at a moments notice) but ultimately getting out of town seemed like the best option. The air quality at home is considered hazardous and all of us were beginning to feel the effects of breathing so much smoke filled air. 💨 

Flights to Denver were only $40 each so we opted to fly there and rent a car to get back to Kansas (about a 6 hour drive.)

It was beautiful and sunny the entire drive. The kids were great travelers as usual and I think we were all just happy to be breathing fresh air.

We got into Greensburg pretty late, the 2 hour time difference put us there after 11:00. Jason has pulled our RV out and plugged it into electric for us so we could just climb in and go to sleep when we got there.

The next morning Leslie cooked us pancakes 🥞 and then we headed over the Chad and Amanda’s for church.

Kenton picked right up where he left off a few weeks ago with his new friends.

Chad and Leslie has both just returned from Oregon as well and Chad has a great message for us about 

You can watch the whole thing here if you’re interested:

After church we went for a drive to see the property that the church bought. 3,000 square foot home and 56 acres for $77,000. Crazy! They are in the process of gutting it do they can rebuild from the bones up, but they have great vision and I can’t wait to see what God does here in Kansas.

After that we got a little tour of the town of Greensburg and were able to visit this place 👇🏼

An EF-5 tornado tore through the town of Greensburg in May of 2007. I remember hearing about it on the news. It flattened 95% of the time, destroying over 1,000 homes according to Wikipedia. It was so sad to see the destruction left in its wake. Only 11 people lost their lives (praise God!) but after that, many choose to love away instead of rebuild. If you drive spying town you’ll see many empty lots with only a driveway and foundation. apparently you can pick up some of these properties pretty cheap at local auctions.

After our little tour of the town and history lesson, we headed back to Chad and Amanda’s house to check on the kids, bring them some pizza for dinner and then leave again so that us adults could go out to eat Mexican food in Pratt (about 30 minutes east of Greensburg).

Again... no picture of our group. Sad 😢 

I need to get better at taking group pictures.

Monday morning the girls played with kittens and Kenton and I went on a ride with Amanda and her littles to feed cows while Rob had his work call in the RV.

From there we drove to Wichita to return the rental car. We had a flat tire to get fixed, which turned out to be a huge hassle since most of the local tire shops didn’t have the RV tire that we needed. Eventually we got that taken care of and headed south for Oklahoma.

There was a beautiful sunset in our drive south and we got to Oklahoma City in time to wank around the bombing memorial from 1995. I’ll save those deets for another post, just didn’t want to get too far behind on my travel blogging.

Hope all you Oregon friends are hanging in there and that the smoke and fires continue to subside. ✌🏼