The Reunion

Last weekend was my 10 year class reunion back in Liberal. Cody and I left on Friday morning so that we could stop at Grandma Knowlton's house for lunch. We got a later start than expected, had to drop Darwin off at the kennel, and had to go by Target to get a new purse (the strap on mine broke the night before). Then we got caught in all sorts of road construction on the way including a one lane road with a flagperson. Needless to say, we were late to lunch.

When we finally got to St. John, we had lunch and a good visit with Grandma and Uncle Jim. We stayed for a couple of hours and then got back on the road. I'd forgotten exactly how long of a drive it is to Liberal since I hadn't been back in over 8 years.

We got into town around 6:30 and checked into the Liberal Inn. Boy, has Liberal changed! One whole end of town is very run-down and many of the buildings on the main street are closed. I felt a little sick to my stomach the first time we drove down Kansas Ave. The other end of town has exploded. There are so many new businesses. The house I grew up in looks horrid. It was a cedar house which is now covered with light blue siding that has burnt orange trim. The yard looks like somebody was trying to landscape but quit halfway and let everything become overgrown.

Enough complaining....we went to the LHS football game and sat with some friends from high school. Then we all went to a bar in town and hung out for the rest of the night. Melinda and Toby convinced us to get on their bus afterwards and we were out WAY too late. We even made a trip to the state line. Cody was very excited because he had never been to OK before. I took a picture of him with the OK dirt. We ate some tacos from a taco stand on the border, which Cody claims were the best tacos ever!

On Saturday we got up to take a tour of the high school. It was mostly the same except they have added a small addition. Cody was very interested in all of the trophy cases. We left LHS to go eat at the Pancake House which hasn't changed a bit. In fact, I think one of the cooks has been there since I was a kid. We followed up with a trip to Dorothy's House where Cody took a picture of me beside my brick from when I was a Dorothy. I'm sure Cody was very impressed with the tour.

Then we drove around town for awhile so I could show Cody all of my old haunts. We stopped by the cemetary to put flowers on Grandpa Knowlton's and Great-Grandma Knowlton's graves. Next was lunch at Cattleman's which also hasn't changed a bit. The original plan was to go to the air museum next, but we decided to take a nap due to our late night. Cody says missing the air museum just gives us an excuse to go back. We had our reunion dinner at the Elk's Lodge. Not very many classmates showed up...apparently a lot of people didn't know about the reunion or got very short notice. I was disappointed that more of my friends from high school weren't there.

Sunday we spent the day driving home. It had been awhile since I've driven across Kansas and I had never seen any of the wind farms before. I thought they were quite interesting. One of the gas stations we stopped at had a "scenic look" at one of the wind farms, so I decided to be a dork and take some pics. That about does it for our trip to Liberal. Maybe we'll go back in another 8 years or so.