Friday, July 3 - Day 17: Surprise!

Surprise!  Today I was not actually heading across the Nebraska Sandhills as I put in my last post.  Instead, I was heading across Kansas to see my daughters in Manhattan (Kansas).  See, my oldest daughter (Trisha) and her husband John live there as she is attending KSU (Kansas State University).  My youngest daughter (Lindsey) lives near Phoenix, Arizona as she is attending ASU (Arizona State University) but she was flying to Manhattan to spend the weekend with her sister. The last time I saw Lindsey was at Christmas as we did a family Christmas in Phoenix.

When I was planning the trip, they had asked if I planned to stop by on my trip as I could see both of them at the same time.  I had said "no" because I wasn't sure how things were going to work out and didn't want to set expectations that I could not meet.  As I have been on the trip, in the back of my mind, I knew stopping by was a possibility if things went well and I was a little ahead of schedule.  A couple of days ago I told Trisha that I would be able to stop by and that I wanted to surprise Lindsey so we put together a plan.

Lindsey was scheduled to arrive in Manhattan around 3:15.  Of course her flights got messed up but after much work with the airlines, she did get other flights arranged and arrived around 5:20.  To arrive prior to my daughter, yesterday I did not stay in Colorado Springs but stayed in Burlington, Colorado which is near the Kansas border.  That left about a 4.5 hour boring drive across Kansas today.  I arrived shortly after 1;00 today.  I am not posting a map for today's route as the GPS directions said go 315 miles, turn left and arrive.

When they returned from the airport, I was in the house around the corner and let them both come in. Lindsey was greeted by Trisha's 2 Corgi dogs (Einstein and Ros).  As Lindsey was playing with them, I tapped her on the shoulder.  She turned around and was totally surprised to see me.  She had no idea.  The hug I received and the look on her face was priceless.

Saturday I should complete the journey and return home. Please watch for a final update with my closing thoughts and statistics from the trip.