April 15-21, 2019 — This week we continued on our journey north to Minnesota by traveling from Elk City, Oklahoma to Des Moines, Iowa covering over 800 miles. Now this may not seem like that far of a distance to some, for our style of travel it was a huge amount as we would prefer to go much slower and have the opportunity to spend more time in the areas we visit. We also would have preferred to not travel on several of the days we did as to avoid the strong spring winds that are common in Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa.
While driving from Elk City to Oklahoma City, OK we experienced very strong cross winds making for a tough and tiring trip. From Oklahoma City we turned north and the winds continued varying from crosswinds to headwinds but consistently between 20 and 30 miles per hour with much higher gusts. The winds from Topeka, KS to Des Moines, IA were out of the southwest giving us a good push north so we took advantage of that and covered the entire 270 miles in one day instead of stopping at the halfway point as we originally planned. Tailwinds are much nicer to drive in!
Even with the high miles traveled and prevailing winds we did get some exploring in. We visited two state capitol buildings, took an elevator deep into the ground, climbed lots of stairs, saw famous horses and much, much more. Follow along below for more details of the sights we visited.
All nights this week were free stays with two nights at a Boondockers Welcome host site, two nights at Walmart and three nights at three separate Harvest Host locations.