The Great Plains

Tiger Walk photos


So the first day was a long one. But I was hoping to make it to Columbia Missouri by the following afternoon, so I was happy to have travelled the greater distance the first day making the next seem tolerable. After crossing some pretty scenic roads in Southern Indiana, I got onto Interstate 65 by late midday and was bored all the way to St. Louis. The Arch was a cool landmark to see in passing as I rolled through and merged onto I-70. Columbia couldn’t come fast enough from there though.

I met up with my friends Ben and Yoder at Ben’s place by about 5pm. It was great to see them again, and Yoder had driven the 5 hours or so from Hutchinson, KS to meet up. Ben helps with the campus church at The Rock on the University of Missouri campus, so we got to attend the Saturday evening service there that night. It was cool to see the ministry that Ben’s now involved in, and they’re doing some good stuff to try to connect with and encourage students from Scripture. It is often a tough transition for students leaving home and all, so please pray for Ben and the others helping with the Rock.

It was welcome weekend for the campus as classes were to start that week. It was quite impressive as Ben and his girlfriend took us for a tour of the campus. I never expected central Missouri to be as nice as it was, but the campus is full of rolling hills, and some architecturally stunning buildings. After my first ever experience eating at Chipotle, we had the privilege of participating in the annual Tiger Walk where the incoming freshmen walk one direction through the huge columns in the middle of campus (by participate I mean eat some free ice cream that is available for those who walk through). It was actually pretty cool as there are 3-4,000 students signalling their entrance into the University, and after 4 years (or however many it takes to graduate), they’ll all (who pass) walk the other direction just before graduation to signal the exit.

The next morning I left through Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas where there wasn’t much of note, but at least a few hills still. I got to stop in Newton, Kansas, where Tina had just bought a house that had been trashed by the previous residents. It’ll be a really nice place when she’s done with it, but she was still in the middle of putting lots of time and energy into it when I visited. I thought about giving a hand with the varnishing of the hardwood floor she was working on that day, but for some reason Tina wouldn’t let me help after I grabbed a can of black spray paint and asked her where to begin. And then that night I got to stay for the first time with an Amish family (a progressive Amish tradition called Beechy Amish). There was some great food and conversation and I learned that a couple people in the family had attended a Mennonite Bible Institute very close to where I grew up. It wasn’t nearly as awkward, nor quite as funny as the double-date my Amish-background friend and I had been on a year and a half before when the one girl was making comments about how weird the Amish were before she knew he had grown up in an Amish family, but it was definitely a good evening.

The following day was a lot of driving through the flat, open expanses of Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado. Passing through Dodge City and the site of the first rodeo was not nearly as exciting as I was hoping it would be, and a crazy Midwest storm a couple hours outside of Denver made for a fitting end to a lousy day. The torrential rains came from a pitch black sky in the late afternoon and winds and rain that forced me to wait at a gas station for over an hour and I still drove an hour or so in the not so heavy part of the storm. But, by the end of the day, I was near to the foothills of the Rockies, so I knew I had some nicer roads to look forward to.

That will wait for another day.