The opportunity that arises when plans don’t go your way

Day 2 of our trip started with high promise. We woke up at 6 am in Okley, Kansas, packed up the RV and drove across the street to get gas on the way to Fort Collins, Colorado. Then, the screeching and the vibrations begun again. The carrier bearing in the drive shaft that had gotten “fixed” the day before was actually blown.

We decided to play it safe and head back to the RV site and connect back up while we called Outdoorsy and anyone who may have the bearing in stock. But, this was rural Kansas on a Sunday and no one was open or working. After many calls, the nice lady at Outdoorsy’s customer service told us there was nothing to do until Monday. We were stranded for sure for the rest of that day if not more.

However, we decided that this bump in the road wasn’t going to slow us down. I used my Trails app and found local trails for us to go to. Dennis decided to stay behind to do some repacking and to see if he could figure out more about what was wrong with the RV.

The boys, 2 of the dogs (the large ones) and I got into Dennis’ Prius and drove 20 minutes on a local road towards a place called Monument Rock. At some point, the road turned into unpaved gravel road surrounded by both sides by either crops (wheat, soy and corn) or cows. We passed so many cows that at some point one of them was right next to the car and decided that it could take on a tiny Prius, so it started to pick up speed along side the car and veering into the side of the car. Fortunately, I was able to quickly accelerate to avoid being slammed by a cow (after I, admittedly, dropped some choice language I’m not proud of). On this gravel road we also saw a prairie dog and a baby turtle.

We started the trip listening to Hamilton songs but eventually turned on the FM radio and listened to country songs which really set the scene for our local adventure. As we passed field after field of corn, wheat or soy, we started thinking nothing would show up in the flat Kansas landscape. Then we saw this.

Monument Rocks, also called the Chalk Pyramids. According to their official site, these are 70 feet tall sedimentary formations of Niobrara Chalk were created by the erosion of a sea bed which formed during the Cretaceous Period. 80 million years ago, this land was the sea bed beneath the Western Interior Seaway which covered much of what is now North America. They were beautiful!

We walked around with the dogs and marveled at the amazing structures!

After we left Monument Rocks, we drove to a nearby site to another highly-recommended trail found with my AllTrails app: the Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park.

While Monument Rocks was mostly a watch and marvel location, this one was a legit hiking path. I was amazed to find how dry the landscape was and how most of the vegetation that was around was cactus and other hardy plants.

This location was composed of small canyons and rock formations.

While the hike was wonderful, we were happy to head back since the heat of the day was starting to make us all feel sluggish. It was well worth it and not at all what I expected to find.

How many things in life happen that way? We feel crestfallen and dismayed when things don’t go our way but miss the opportunity to turn it into an adventure and an opportunity. I feel blessed to have had to slow down and get to know Kansas a little bit better. We ended up being delighted and amazed at sights on our own state. This trip is meant to create memories for us and the boys and this definitely was one of them!