Retired and Trippin

Our goal on this trip was to ride some of the Kansas Scenic Byways as listed in a publication of the same name.   There are nine of them.   We would not ride three of them simply because we’ve ridden them before.   One is the Glacial Hills Byway which is K-7 Hwy from Leavenworth to White Cloud in northeast Kansas .   The second is the Frontier Military Byway from Leavenworth south through Ft. Scott to Baxter Springs.   The third is the Native Stone Byway from Dover to Alma on highways 4 and 99. There are other places we want to visit that we learned about from other sources.   Those include the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker City , Mushroom Rock State Park , the Garden of Eden in Lucas, and Liberty of the Plains south of Smith Center . Friday; May 15, 2009 We (Chris and I) left home in Shawnee at 11:45 AM.   It was cloudy and 78 degrees.   Our destination was Wichita , where we were to have dinner with our good friends, Joe and Donna.   We rode south on I-

The first weekend of May, the time for our annual CHICKEN RIDE, was fast approaching.   For an explanation of what the CHICKEN RIDE is all about see the May 2008 Chicken Ride entry on this blog site.    The weatherman was predicting storms and wet weather for our usual destination – south into Arkansas .   It is not unusual to run into rain on the CHICKEN RIDE but rain was predicted virtually all weekend over a large area in Arkansas .   Our wise and intrepid leader, Gary, decided for the first time in the long storied history of the CHICKEN RIDE to head north. Friday; May 1, 2009 Seventeen riders met in Liberty , MO around 8:00 AM.   Rod retained the chicken from the previous year and he displayed it proudly from his leather jacket.   We rode north on Hwy 69 to Cameron , MO , where we stopped for breakfast. While parking our motorcycles in Ma & Pa Kettle Restaurant parking lot Joe dropped his motorcycle, which earned him the chicken.   Rod gladly relinquished the dirty bird.   Af