Newton

We're at Mokas. Mokas is a small coffee shop on Main Street in Newton. They have free wireless!!! Jay is eating cinnamon french toast sticks, I just had a blueberry cream cheese coffee cake and a latte. I have a lot of catching up to do...

First, I have no Internet service at my new house. It seemed silly to pay 30$ a month
when I'm only here a few weeks a year. So I'm unable to just sit on the futon at night and write and e-mail and blog.

The trip so far.....
Last blog we were in Amarillo. We left the next morning and drove about 6 hours into
Newton. I am so not going to bore you with the minutia of my trip, so suffice it to say that we made it to Newton, unloaded and drove to Salina where my brother lives and where there were tables and chairs, a couch and a washer and dryer to load up to drive back to Newton (thank you!!). Two words - River Festival I usually do not put in a series of pictures, but I think the pictures say so much. The festival was four days of incredible art, bands and community. Salina has a population of about 48,000 but they have a daily turnout to this festival of at least 10,000 people. We ended up staying Salina for two days so we could go to the festival (and sleep). A few words about the pictures....that butterfly is painted on the grass!
And that's a picnic table in the background. It's on the bank of the river.



The ants are wire sculptures. Every bridge had some sort of art attached or surrounding it. There were poetry walls, tons of kids activities and two big stages. There were bands and dancers and poets and story-tellers.

The art, food, and crafts were all juried and were awesome. I had one of the best music experiences I ever had; a band called Black Violin. They are two guys, classically trained violinists, playing in a more hip-hop/rock/R&B style. They were incredible. And here's Jay with a big spider.


The next two pictures are more random art; a string of fish on the river and a grass snake on the bank. I was just really impressed with the caliber of the art and music and food. We had alligator on a stick!! So, that was a fun and unexpected detour.

We got to Newton on Sunday and unloaded that day. Monday we traveled to a farm house in Sedgewick and bought a fifty dollar stove, we cleaned, we made Walmart runs for a toaster and a shower curtain and a set of tools. Jay vacuumed and did dishes.

Tuesday (today) we woke up to fleas (YUCK) but just a few and I already had the pest guy come out and KILL them all. (Me, on the phone, "I need you to come out NOW, or I need to call someone else because I am FREAKING out) We are headed to go get a refrigerator and then my friend, Kristy from Topeka is coming in to see us.

I have so much more to write about, and pictures of the house and Main Street and all the beautiful green trees everywhere but, Jay apparently does not want to sit in a coffee shop for two hours. So before we have to step outside to settle this, I'm going to head out and write more later.