Bells in Texas

Sunday night, April 13th, 2008. I have returned to the frozen tundra known as Minne-so-cold. Odd are that I will not have time to blog daily or as things happen because "things" are crazy right now.

On Friday, 4/11, The Fetching Mrs. Bell, Murphy the Wonder-dog, and I drove The Jeep down to the Big D. It was about a 14 hour trip. Pretty much a straight shot down I-35 from the Twin Cities to Dallas.

There were relatively few problems with the adventure. Of course, I would get to call it an adventure if there wasn't one or two issues that sprang up...

I was so prepared. I had the oil changed and the regular maintenance performed on The Jeep. We just got a set of 4 highway tread tires put on a week ago. I had precision packed The Jeep like it was the Tetris World Championships. We had plenty of Red Bull and beef jerky. We were set. My wife even printed off the directions from Google. (However I should have brought a map as you'll find out....)

The night before we left, it was sleeting and snowing. A real mess. It was warm though, so the ice was melting from the roads quickly. We wanted to leave at 04:30 hours, but as things go, we left the driveway at about 04:50 hours. Not too big of a deal.

The sleet gave way to rain by the time we made it south of Burnsville. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing from the south at about 30? miles and hour. And of course we are heading straight south. So the mileage, which is usually about 20mpg highway, was down to about 12-15? Of course we were loaded to the gills with shoes and handbags and dog toys. Basically, the essentials. ;)

We make good time nonetheless. We got down to Kansas City. Now, I would have normally just continued on I-35, but Google suggests that we take the Kansas Turnpike. Okay. I do not mind paying a few bucks to maybe save some time and avoid traffic, right?

Well, to make a much longer story short, the Krapsass Turdpike only has like 3 or 4 exits on it and it is like 200 miles long. And of course, there are no signs explaining this to drivers who are just passing through. If there was ONE sign saying "LAST CHANCE FOR GAS FOR 50 MILES," I missed it.

I came up to the Topeka exit. This was the first exit after KC that I noticed. I had a quarter tank left of fuel. I will go another 20-30 miles and fill up again. I thought.

After about 25 miles, my fuel light came on indicating that I only had 1/8 of a tank left. The Jeep has a 20 gallon tank and I was getting at best 15 miles to the gallon with the wind and weight? So that gives me roughly 37.5 miles left before I really need to start worrying.

All the while there have been no noticeable signs indicating when the next exit will appear. No billboards, no nothing. We came to this area called The Flint Hills. It is a grass desert. The tourism board says that it looks like this:


Except that it actually looks like this:


It is like a barren moonscape, not the pristine grassland that the prairie hugger want you to think it is.

Here is a nice picture of the majestic mud hole they call a lake:

If you look really hard, you can see the dead trees in the "lake."


So I was sure that Team Bell was going to be running out of gas. I had no idea when the next exit, let alone the next gas station would come. There were not even farm houses near the turnpike. There were some off in the distance every few miles, but I was not sure if I should hike back or go forward to the next one. I had gone like 30 miles and not a gas station in sight.


Here comes the part about the map. If I had a map, I could have at least had an idea of where I was. Instead, all I had was: "Continue on I-335 S/Kansas Turnpike - Toll road."

Everyone has seen those slasher films where the people break down in the middle of nowhere and end up dinner for the local cannibals (Texas Chainsaw, Wrong Turn, The Hills Have Eyes, etc.) or psychopathic Truck driver. This was not going to happen if I had any control over the situation left.


So I slowed down to 55 and turned off all the accessory power devices. We drove for 20 more miles praying that we would make it.


We finally came to Emporia and coasted into the pumps. We still couldn't get off the turnpike, but there was a McDonalds and a Phillips 66. Actually I had roughly 1 gallon left in my tank.



My wife and I thanked the Lord profusely and rejoiced that we did not run out of gas. I think Murphy was even excited.

After filling up the tank, I went into the store and bought two candy bars, one king size Twix and a king size Caramello. And a map...