June 17 Day 9 Tuesday Happy Birthday to my brother!

Today was a LONG day!!! We left Wichita, Kansas about 10:30 this am after a nice Continental breakfast at our motel, The Best Western. We started the day with 1234.9 miles on the trip odometer. We traveled on I135 to Salina, KS where we got on I70West. Siri's sister kept us on track and got us to our destination. She took a long nap while we drove many miles straight west. The only time she woke up was when we pulled off the freeway to get gas and she thought we were lost so directed us to make legal u-turns to get back on the freeway!! Haven't figured out how to put her on pause while we make a detour. I actually passed up several quilt stores today. The weather was good today except it was very windy. Thankful there were no storms to deal with.
 We saw hundreds of windmills over a very large area. They must be more profitable than growing crops!! We also saw very few billboards that were all in tact. There must have been some pretty hefty winds in the area at some point. Even some of the large highway signs were laying twisted on the ground. The country side looked mostly green except for the 1000's of acres of wheat that is ready for harvesting. It's amazing how much open land there is in this country. We were talking about the early settlers and trying to imagine how they made it across that country walking, riding  horse, or in a wagon. They must have been pretty tough people. They must have had a hard time keeping their directions straight. There is nothing to anchor your sights on like mountains. Just the sun I guess.
In Oklahoma as well as Kansas there are many oil wells. We were calling them grasshoppersbecause the pumps looked like grasshoppers. Some were functioning, others sat idle. Some were rusty and old looking, others were painted various colors. One was red, white, and blue with stars!!
We were on the road 8 hours today - probably 7 hours actually driving. It was a long day for Lon and he was pretty tired when we got here. Wish he could relax enough to sleep in the car but he can't. We are in Denver at the Best Western Plus Denver International Airport. It's on the hwy that we are going to take from here to Laramie Wyoming to catch Interstate 80 to head to Salt Lake City, Elko, Reno, and points west. At the rate we are going, it's going to take us 2 weeks to get to Calif. That doesn't leave much time to be out there before we have to start home. Not looking forward to that part of the trip.
Here's Lon this am as we were leaving Wichita, KS. And our arrival destination.
Hope all is well with everyone out there. Take care. <3