Topeka and Des Moines

For those of you who thought that Topeka was some sort of dessert, you’re thinking of tapioca. Topeka is the capital city of the state of Kansas. It’s actually quite a beautiful city when the wind isn’t blowing and the place isn’t under threat of tornadoes and hailstorms.

We camped at Perry State Park, about a half-hour drive northeast of Topeka. We had a wonderful view of the lake, although our campsite wasn’t very level: We were obliged to put some lumber under the wheels. We also needed lumber for Jackie to reach the steps and even then she had to work to pull herself in. The trials and tribulations of being short!

Within a couple of hours of our arrival, the camp host knocked on our door to tell us that a tornado was expected in about half an hour, and that the washroom and shower facility was our designated shelter. We could hear the distant wailing siren warning us of the impending storm when we opened the door. The camp host pointed to the shelter, about 100 meters from our site, and told us not to worry about whether we used the men’s or ladies’ side.

So, we pulled in our slides with a plan to head to the shelter and await destruction. On our way, we passed another camper who was watching the approaching tornado on an outdoor TV mounted to the side of his trailer. He was tuned to a live local broadcast. He hadn’t bothered to pull in his slides or pack away his outdoor furniture. He told us that about 20 campers had cancelled their reservations because of the weather. He lived in Topeka and said he would only change his plans and pull in his slides if the tornado came within 15 to 20 minutes of the campground, based on the live weather tracker.

The tornado we were watching on his TV appeared to be turning east, well south of us, and the sirens had already gone silent. By morning, we learned that it had indeed wreaked havoc in several towns about a half-hour’s drive south of Topeka.

The next day and night were warm and pleasant. It was sunny and especially nice, so we went for a 30 km bike ride along a beautifully maintained path in Topeka. Jackie got quite the surprise while riding around Topeka: a live elephant walking beside her. Thankfully, it was safely on the other side of a fence.

Rain was predicted for our third day in Kansas, so we drove to Lawrence, a small city southeast of our campground. Our plan was to park at the south end of the main street, walk north, have lunch at a pub, and then return on the other side of the street.

On our walk north, we encountered protesters. Given that Kansas is a conservative state, we were surprised to see anti-Trump, anti-ICE demonstrators. They were handing out flyers indicating they assemble weekly on Sundays at the same intersection.

In the wee hours of Sunday night, another storm hit; not a tornado this time, but quite violent nonetheless. It started with strong winds rocking the motorhome (which, as I mentioned, was perched on lumber). Then came the rain, in torrents. It was 3 AM and we got out of bed and pulled in the slide-outs. Then came the hail, irregular in shape but about the size of golf balls. We checked the radar on our phones and, since no tornado was predicted, we went back to bed.

In the morning, I inspected both the motorhome and the car. The motorhome seemed to have survived unscathed, but the car now has about 20 small dents. They’re shallow, but noticeable when the sun hits them just right. As I was checking for damage, I noticed others doing the same. The fellow camping nearest to us said his ceiling vent cover had cracked. The shared experience turned into an opportunity to meet several nearby campers and compare travel stories.

When we left Topeka, we headed north to Des Moines, Iowa. Since we had never been to Iowa before with the motorhome, we earned another state sticker on our first night at Yellow Banks Campground. This turned out to be perhaps the nicest campground we’ve seen so far this year, beautifully maintained, with plenty of space at each site, and all with 50-amp service.

The day after we arrived, we drove into downtown Des Moines, parked, and walked across the river to the State Capitol Building shown at the top of this blog post. With its gold dome, it’s quite impressive. We returned a couple of days later for a guided tour. The tour guide confirmed that the dome was indeed covered with gold but that the gold was very thin. She said if all the gold on the dome was rolled into a ball, the ball would be the size of a baseball. The interior of the building also has quite a bit of gold leaf evident. But not all the trim inside that looked like gold was actually gold. The tour guide spent a fair amount of time telling us which was which. I cannot for the life of me understand why it mattered. She also spent quite a bit of time explaining which parts of the structure was real marble and which parts were man made to look like marble. I don’t know why that mattered either.

While walking through town, we stopped into a bike shop and ended up having a lengthy discussion with the owner, mostly about the Velotric Fold 1 Plus e-bike. We are both quite intrigued by this model because it has many of the features we’ve been looking for. It has one hard-to-get feature we currently have which Jackie’s not giving up. Our current e-bikes still work well, but their range has dropped to under 60 km on level ground. We could replace the batteries to get back to 80 km, but they’re expensive. about half the cost of a new bike. If we do decide to upgrade, we’ll purchase in Canada, where prices are about the same.

The next day, we drove to Bouton, unloaded the bikes, and rode to Madrid for lunch on an abandoned rail line. The 30 km round trip took us over the Des Moines River twice. The photo above shows Jackie on one of the bridges. We were told that parts of it are lit with blue lights at night, but we were back at the motorhome well before dark.

This ride reminded us of cycling in Europe where bike rides generally passed through small towns and followed paved paths completely separate from automobile traffic.

We’ll be heading east when we leave Des Moines, and expect to be back in Ontario by the end of May.