Craig Daily Press

To the editor:

I would like to thank Colorado Northwestern Community College, Mary Shearer and Kathy Ross for seven wonderful days. We took a trip to the heartland of America and Branson, Mo.

We saw wonderful shows and visited the homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder. We saw the rock home that her daughter had built for her when she sold her first book for $10,000. This was the highlight of my trip.

We had stopped at Russell Stover’s candy store and factory on our way to Branson. We all stocked up with a lot of chocolate. When we were on our way home, we were tired and wanted to go dinner and to our rooms.

Mary said we should stop one more time as she needed some more candy. So $16 more and a double ice cream cone later, we wondered why Mary was not in any hurry. We saw that she was doing a lot of text messaging.

Just before we got to Hays, Kan., she turned on the radio and we heard there was a tornado heading our way. As we got into Hays, the sirens were blasting and the police were running their sirens. We got to the hotel, and you never saw seven tired seniors move out of the van so fast.

We spent 3 1/2 hours in the basement of the Whiskey Creek restaurant. The help was wonderful — they provided chairs, ice water and cookies for us. They had a laptop and we watched the tornado cells around us. A cute little waitress had tears in her eyes because her mother and grandmother were right in the path of the tornado. We later learned they were fine.

We said a prayer for those on the road and in the path of the tornado.

But, I said a silent prayer that our van would not be flying all across Kansas like Dorothy’s house. We did meet a lot of very nice people.

I decided after one night of tornadoes, I would not complain about six months of snow.

Thanks again, Mary, Kathy and CNCC for making this trip possible and also my six partners in crime. May, Janet, Aggie, Charleen, Cleo and Vernice. I never laughed so much.

Lucille Theis