Today started with our general flurry of trying to get out of the house on time after having stayed up too late. After the stickers, Evan and I both added a little oil, which turns out to be considered a consumable by both vehicles.
Otherwise, the plan was simple: two park stops for historical exploration and a lot of mileage crunching. However, recent untested repairs needed a road test. Evan’s new fuel pump. My adjusted accelerator. And George’s replacement throttle position sensor.
We started at the Santa Fe Park as our final stop in Independence, which marks (near-ish) the start of the Oregon and California Trails, as well as the Santa Fe Trail.
Santa Fe Park preserves approximately one-quarter mile of Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trail ruts in the heart of the city of Independence, Missouri. These ruts align with trail ruts found a half mile north on the Bingham-Waggoner estate, a 19.5 acre museum and park, that is open to the public.
National Parks Service
I knew about the Santa Fe trail, but I didn’t realize that it, too, originates in this region of Missouri. It forks south at Olathe, where our route continued on toward Topeka. State Highway 4 and US Highway 40 together form this section of the Oregon Trail Auto Tour, and relatively closely follow the National Historic Trail.
Perhaps I’m getting old, but I will admit… as much as I am one for dramatic mountainous landscapes, spending the day rolling over prairie hills was surprisingly lovely. And after several days of rain and clouds, it was sunny and mid-70s and stunning outside.
Topeka turned into our automotive stop for the day. Evan was in luck — this was the longest continuous drive the Piazza has done so far, and it seemed to go well. The adjustment to the accelerator tension in the Volvo was surprisingly helpful. But I was unable to open my fuel filler door — it doesn’t lock, so why didn’t it open? Turns out… it does lock. The power locks for the car doors also lock and unlock the fuel filler door, except that, like the rear driver-side door, the lock is unreliable, so it was stuck. The answer turned out to be locking and unlocking all the doors again. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’ll be fine.
George’s matter turned out to be somewhat more complicated. He damn-near declared the Fiero dead. After some diagnosis at the sketchy gas station in Downtown Topeka, we discovered that there was a spark arcing between one of his spark plug wires and … something that wasn’t the spark plug.
Turns out, two of his spark plug wires were resting on the exhaust manifold, which melted one of them. Of all the show-stopper problems to have, this both supported a dramatic narrative and was easily fixed. We stopped by an O’Reilly for a new set of plug wires, let his engine cool over lunch and errands, and he swapped them out pretty quickly under the passing shade of a Best Buy sign.
Sometimes I realize how far we’ve come in this, George. Like, when we did the first trip back in 2015, did you even know any of the words you just used?
After the repair, we continued another hour or so to Alcove Springs. George reported substantial improvements in the Fiero, which was great news. I decided not to raise any concern about what felt like some fuel delivery misses or clutch slippage in the Volvo, because admitting it aloud might make it real. Instead, we pressed on for the park.
Near the Independence Crossing on the Oregon Trail, a spring-fed waterfall spitting off the “alcove” of a jutting rock formation was the last stop with shade and water before the long trail to California. A member of the Donner[-Reed Party — George McKinstry, according to the placcard] party even gave the spring its name, carving it into the top of the alcove in 1846, the very year of [their] infamous incident that occurred in the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains. Flooding on the Blue River left the party stuck near Maryville, Kansas for five days. They explored the area, discovering the falls.
Atlas Obscura
The park also has several areas where indentations from wagon ruts are still visible and overlooks used as camping spots by the pioneers. There is also a memorial to Sarah Keyes, the first member of the Donner-Reed Party to die on the trail — at 70 years old she died of “old age and consumption,” but she was spared the starvation that followed.
The site of this park was also where pioneers (and video game players!) would have crossed the Big Blue River, a large tributary of the Kansas River. The “historic riverbed” here is now just fields and a creek as the course of it has changes over the years. Oddly, there are a couple highway bridges signed as Big Blue River crossings, too, which seem not to be over water anymore.
After exploring a while longer, we made our way up to dinner at The Wagon Wheel Restaurant in Marysville, Kansas before a long-haul into Kearney, Nebraska for the night at our Crown Plaza Waterpark. We arrived after both the water park and the historic fort closed, but I’m hoping we hit one or both tomorrow.
