Kansas--Colorado

Poor Tim and Linda had a pump malfunction in the morning and there was no water in the house (this somehow did not deter them from preparing a delicious breakfast).  The repairman was able to come out right away and just before we were heading out they got the water back on.  We delayed our departure a few minutes so we could grab a shower, and then headed out around 9:30am.

About 5 minutes after leaving Tim & Linda's house we hit a giant rock and/or pothole and both the tires on the right side of our car looked iffy.  We found a shady spot to pull over and had the local tire shop send a truck out (since it was two tires and we had only one spare, we couldn't just pop on the one we had).

Tim and his son came out to hang with us until it got resolved, which turned out to be really nice because we had to shuttle back and forth between the tire shop in Clay Center, then drive with our "hack fix" down to Abilene to get the real new tires put on.  Thankfully Tim and his son were headed that direction anyway, so we caravaned down and in Abilene while the tires were being replaced we all went over to the Chinese buffet and had lunch together.  

We finally got out of Abilene at 1:30 pm (our original departure plan was 9am!) and started into our longest drive of the trip West:  9 hours to Loveland, CO.

Lots of plains, thunderstorms and rain later, we arrived around 8:30pm at Ann Louise's house.