05-09-11 - Drivin’!

05-09-11
“I’ve got my foot on the accelerator…(Drivin’!)”
338 miles
Centennial, Co to Aurora to Limon to Ellis, Ks
I get ready to leave Centennial and Colorado, but first to finally get my birthday gift of wireless broadband to finally work. I head off to Boost Mobile store just as it opens. I tell the clerk the whole story of how I keep getting told to take the device to a Wal-Mart to get it “unlocked” and being told at Wal-Mart they don’t unlock things. ‘Round and ‘round and ‘round it goes, where it stops? It aint with them!
I am told they can’t do anything to help me. I received a Birthday present and bought a top up card and can’t get anyone to get it to work. I check the internet and find a Wal-mart Supercenter in Aurora and set the Garmin to get me there.
I arrive and fo in to see what can be done. After a lot of talking and complaining I get them to call Virgin Mobile yet again. After long repeated discussions it’s determined that the device was never “scanned” when sold. The Virgin Mobile lady says she’s going to tell the Wal-Mart person to replace the unit. I hand her back the phone. The Wal-Mart employee tells me there’s nothing they can do. I tell herr the Virgin mobile rep just told me they were going to have waql-Mart replace it. She informs me they can’t do that without a receipt. I re-state it was a Birthday present. She says I have to get the reciept from the purchaser. I get angry and demand to talk to a manager. Someone comes and basically says the same thing. So it’s put in the hands of the recipient of a gift to inquire of the giver for a reciept that they told me was from months ago (My niece bought two of them on a special sale months ago and gave the first one to my nephew the truck driver and his has been working well for months. I’m told that IF she still has that reciept, there are “TC” code numbers (% sets of 4 numbers) that I can then take back into a Wal-Mart Anywhere and they’ll see the transactions and then they’ll be able to scan a code to activate the device and I can use the top up card I purchased to make it work. Very disappointing. Basically they are saying that my niece stole the device (or maybe that I did) and that it’s not their clerk’s scanning error. If I had the box it came in still that might have helped…but being a bulky bock and the device being so small (flash drive size) I’d chosen to not cart the useless carton around with me. I wish I’d kept it. But I guess they’d have made some other reason not to enable the product.
Enough of this - on to Kansas.
Getting to Kansas is a bit farther than I’d imagined. I’ve set the Garmin to Salina, Ks and it’s about 250 miles or so and It’s a good 177 just to Limon, Co Long stretches of farm land and open areas. The day is warm and getting hot.
We get to the Kansas border and stop at the welcome center. I get a bunch of brochures and information about places I think I might get to see or want to know about.
Getting to Salina is big. I go to Santa Fe street and take pictures of places that ;look old enough to possible be one of the houses my Dad and his first wife lived in while stationed here in the early 40’s.
I drive up the main drag of the old town taking snapshots from my car. I get gas as Gas Buddy says the prices here are about as good as I can’t find anywhere in Kansas - $3.79. I continue on to Abilene. I think maybe this might be the Abilene George Hamilton sang about because it’s sure more “Pretty” than Abilene , Tx! I went to the President Eisenhower Library and Museum. I saw the chapel he and Maime are buried in nad his childhood home as well as the statue, the 5 column’s put up by the DAR (Who’d have guessed they were “5th Columnists”?)
Getting to Ellis around 6 pm it was surprising to see this campsite was just about 15-17 spaces big and most of them were filled. I took space 15 and put up my tent in heavy winds. Seems to be the only type this state can manage. Nothing or heavy winds. I get the tent up finally and settle in for the evening. The long hot and humid drive has drained me and I’m ready for sleep. The town provides wifi for the sites with the camping fee ($10 for tents in season) but it’s very intermittent and the signal is week. But I do get on from time to time. Around 9pm officer Gabrial (first name0 comes by to collect the fee. I settle in for the night. The heavy winds continue and rain begins as well. The rain is lighter than the wind and actually seems to cut the wind when the rain is around. It is supposed to be raining tomorrow night, so is it here early or is this just a “Bonus”? The tent is getting it’s first try out since Larry Joe Horany geve it to me on May 1st on my way to Denver.
So a baptism of rain rather than fire (always the better option when camping).on the tent’s first use. It does extremely well. Mischa and I will have a good safe comfortable “home” while camping the rest of our journey. Thanks again Larry Joe!
I listen to an Audio book (Fool Moon) until I realize I’ve fallen asleep during a good part of it. I finish listening until I get to the end of the file and then turn off the computer for the night. It’s been running on the new battery I got for my Birthday (Thanks again, Josh!) and it’s down to 15 minutes of power. I only wake once in the night around 3pm…a train is going by in the night (there’s always a train in-terupting my dreams). I wake in the early morning around 5;45.…geese are making noises (quaking, grousing?) it’s annoying but I’m up - briefly. I check the time and decide - “what’s the hurry?” and sleep again until I determine it’s time to get up…of Mischa does. We agree on about 8:15 am and pach up for today’s move free camping near a place called Melvern, Ks. There are actually 3 choices - I take the largest an Army Corp of Engineers site called Sun Dance.
What will today bring?