Wyoming to Nebraska to Kansas and our GPS lady is about to blow her fuse and our patience. We aren’t following the exact path we took at the beginning of our vacation, so it didn’t occur to us that there would be so many bridges washed out by the flood. Stuck on the Kansas border of the Missouri River, three bridges that we thought would be fine, were in fact – NOT THERE !
At the first sign of a signal for my blackberry, I did what any rational person would do and googled. A hundred miles of the rivers’ bridges were washed away by the flood. So it was – Kansas City here we come!
The 152 to 435 loop got us up and over the swollen Missouri River and boy were we ever happy to see Missouri!
Missouri to Illinois to Indiana to Kentucky to West Virginia and then Virginia. Back at our cabin, we saw some bears – a mama with two cubs. She was high up in one of our old apple trees having a nice meal of apples while her cubs played in the tall grass below. It’s too far to get a picture with my cell phone, but I’ll snap a shot of the tree – claw marks and all – once they’ve finished their meal. We don’t want a repeat occurrence of this:<a href="http://writingfeethis:mail.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/a-sobering-sign/”>.
Corn-y Kansas
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HOLY SNAP! Ok now I’m freaked out. The worst we had on the farm was a yappy coyote and rumours of the odd mtn. lion. You had real bears clawing your tree? EEK
Hope you’re home (or soon to be) safe & sound. I’ve really enjoyed your adventure, MJ
Yep – real bears. But they are black bears and generally afraid of humans. The only attacks I know of in the past few years involved a bitten hand in a Wal-Mart parking lot north of us – had to have been feeding the bear – and a man who more or less got run over by a bear when he went out on his deck to put trash in his trash can and a bear was rummaging through it. It frightened the bear and it knocked him down and ran over him on its escape. Both people were fine. But I don’t want to get between a mama and her cubs. That could be a story of a whole different ending!
Are those Missouri River downed-bridges from the earlier flood, not the hurricane? I heard they determined the man found dead on the trail was in fact killed by a bear . . . so caution, especially around a mom with cubs, is certainly the way to go.
They are from the earlier floods – heavy spring and summer rains mixed with the melting snows. And boy did it do damage. I didn’t even realize how much water was still standing in fields and the smaller bridges are just gone. It must have been disastrous.