This past Christmas, my wife gave me an unexpected gift–a pack of eight cards she had prepared, each one describing a trip we will take over the coming year–some are day-trips, some are one or more nights away, but all of the destinations are right here in the state of Kansas. Half of them are places I have visited before, either as a child or while ago–places like the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, which I’ve visited numerous times and never get tired of seeing again and again, or the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, which I visited once when I was an adolescent and haven’t been back to since.
The other half of the cards represent trips like a multi-destination trip to western Kansas to see the Nicodemus National Historic Site, Monument Rocks, and several other places; a visit to the Kansas City Union Station, which is literally an hour away and has numerous exhibits that I’m looking forward to seeing; the Amelia Earhart Hanger Museum in Atchison; and the Powell Observatory in Lousiburg.
Most of the places in the deck of trip cards are places we’ve talked about visiting for years–a few others, like the Powell Observatory, are new finds. If we are able to fit even half of these excursions into the next eleven months, it will have been a very fun and memorable year.
I’m grateful for the gift, and for a loving spouse who somehow always manages to surprise me with gifts that I wouldn’t have imagined, but which are always delightful and meaningful and yet another indication of how much I am loved.
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(Posted in response to 1/24/2024 prompt.)
doug heacock: words 