Ms. Erin Elder, treasured Friend of Dogs, arrived Saturday from Albuquerque in her Deaf

Baptists’ van* in time for a small walk

as far as the standing rock, then dinner, visitations

and the next morning we all went up Dry Creek as far as the spring, the furthest L. and I

have been to date.  In the evening we took another small walk together, went early to bed and

Monday morning, provisioned with coffee, tea and bananas, were down the early road

for fuel, then I-25

one stop south to 10E

and so on

and out; 71N to Ordway, 96E to Eads,

287N which bypassed Kit Carson as we turned on 40E,

all unpopulated two lanes alongside abandoned RRs through half-abandoned grain silo towns

into Kansas for lunch halfway to Oakley at Penny’s in Sharon Springs

[Area code 785, population 751] where our 11:40 became their 12:40 and when we were done

the parking lot, full of flies, was approaching the high nineties; east nonetheless to 83N, across

I-70 [gassed up in the heat], 383 north and east; 36E, Norton [named for Orloff Norton, 1872],

Arapahoe, Nebraska – triple digits all the way…34E took us to Holdredge, 44N to I-80E, thenceforth pounding along in lines of semis for close to three hours [gas in Waco at a seedy truckstop where the drivers were, strangely, mostly Sikhs] until into Omaha in last light seeking

the Farnam Hotel and, finding it, cleaned ourselves up for the celebratory birthday dinner

downstairs Linda wouldn’t have to cook.  Everything good, the corn chili chowder particularly memorable not to mention L’s martini, and all most welcome after eleven hours on the road.  And so to sleep…in Omaha, Nebraska, mid-America.

*Or so the nearly completely faded legends on the sides inferred…a Church Van repurposed as a mobile art studio.