Observations

When we were driving to Smoky Gardens on Friday, I had started with directions from the Day's End Directory (from Escapees) with directions from the north: "US-27(S) to MM 164, TR (W) on Rd 57, go 2 mi, TL (S) on Rd 17, go 3 mi". I was able to find the GPS Coordinates by following a link from Allstays (http://ksoutdoors.com/Fishing/Where-to-Fish-in-Kansas/Fishing-Locations-Public-Waters/Northwest-Region/Sherman-County-Smoky-Gardens). I put those coordinates into our Garmin, and it had us turn west on Rd 52, then north on Rd 17 for two miles, and the park was at the corner of Rd 54 and Rd 17. I realized that the "roads" were 1 mile apart... and we were 17 miles west of somewhere and 54 miles north of somewhere else. It turned out that we were 17 miles west of the Colorado border (and the western edge of Greeley County) and, I think we were 54 miles north of the southern edge of Greeley County (I'm researching using Google Maps and it doesn't show county boundaries, so I'm guessing based on the truckers road atlas map (that shows counties) and comparing to Google Maps).

Here's a capture from Google Maps that shows Roads 52 and 57 and 17.

Wouldn't it be neat that you could know how far away something was by the numbers of the roads?!?!?

Now, this does not seem to be consistent in Kansas - the next county where I noticed (Cheyenne) had their east-west roads with letters - I was thinking, "Maybe the county is not more than 26 miles from north to south." - but then they had "Road AA" and BB and CC and DD -- EE was on the border with Nebraska.

The joys of road routing in locations where there are very few natural obstructions to road direction!

By the way, we were very close to the highest "peak" in Kansas, Mount Sunflower, which tops out at 4,039 ft. I was just reading about it - wish we had driven over to see it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Sunflower).

We made it to Nebraska on Saturday - we decided to stop at Enders Reservoir State Recreation Area. They have electric-only sites and boondocking sites, as well as a place where you can fill your fresh tanks and dump. We were thinking that we would go for a boondocking site (we'd only have to pay the park entry fee of $8), but it was very difficult to determine where we could park (folks were parked all over the place) and it was getting hot and we thought we would want to use the air conditioning... so we went for one of the electric sites ($20/night).

Our site at Enders Reservoir State Recreation area.

The sites are nicely spaced apart, and this one is particularly long and level!

We have an appointment on Monday to see a shop in Evans, Colorado (near Greeley) to look at the awning we had installed in January. There is something odd that is happening with it (the polycord is coming out), and the folks that installed it told us that it is under warranty and we could go to a Carefree of Colorado warranty service place wherever we are. Dwayne says that it isn't very "Carefree" at this point, but we'll go see a warranty place in Colorado and hopefully it is a quick fix.

Oh - and notice that Nebraska is now indicated as visited by Miss Doozie! And... by Sunday, Colorado probably will be as well!