And then there were five: Through the push of the deafening howling winds

I have a love of travel. I love encountering new cultures, new foods and new people. That love of travel is not just for foreign lands. I love traveling across the United States. Its vastness creates several micro-climates in terms of cultures. The west coast is extremely different from that of the east and the southern part of the United States. Oftentimes people associate fun travel with going abroad. In country travel need not be boring.

This week I embarked on a mid-west adventure. See, on Sunday I only had 7 states left to visit before I could say that I have spent significant amount of time in all 50 states.  Today I am down to five states. Wahoo!

This morning I woke up to the howling winds of the high plains of Kansas. These mornings through the Midwest happen to coincide with an artic blast that is hitting the US and each morning has most definitely been of the bright crisp-morning persuasion.  In one day, the temperature dropped 30 degrees. My bare legs could barely stand the freeze. I am on a business trip and decide to pack all dresses and heels. In the middle of the trip snow decided to make an appearance.

We started out in Omaha, Nebraska and have made our way across Nebraska down into Kansas and then down in Oklahoma. All the way, we have been in a speeding car taking in the scenery of cornhusks flying across our windshield. At times, the winds rocked our speeding car and jostled us a bit.  I could not help but feel that I was re-living a bit (albeit in a far more technologically advanced manner) the journey our west that many took century ago.

The howling winds were a bit deafening, especially as I tried to handle a business phone call going at 90 MPH.   Work never stops. Thus, on a business road trip, it is work layered upon work. As I handled the phone call, I was snapping photographs for our report and also trying to help navigate.

As we traveled throughout these states, the towns in between got further and further apart. The skyline got grander and the land got quieter. As we navigated this landscape we thought of how one could move here and just write for days on end.  At times, I felt like Stephen King could get lots of inspiration out here.

At 7pm we were driving from one part of Kansas to another and the roads were dark and immense. At one point a huge bird swopped down across our path and it screeched prompting us to yelp as well.  We could not tell what that bird was. However, I knew if I were writing a horror series that bird would be featured prominently. What type of bird spans 5 feet and swoops down onto a small car in the middle of Kansas? I thought for a second we would be swooped up in its wings and be taken off to land of Oz.

We were in the land of cowboys and vaqueros and the towns had a hum of a horse beat. You could feel a pulse through the small cities that was intensely different from that of the big cities. It is as if you could hear the train tracks being laid out and the horse hooves pounding the land in search of new promise.

Onwards, I go. Enjoying the new scenery and pulse. In a speeding call, on numerous phone calls embedded in some very bright, crisp mornings that chill my bones to the core.

Yeehaw.