My ten-day Emporia Rec tour included the following overnight stops:

• Hays, Kansas
• Parachute, Colorado
• Flamingo in Las Vegas, Nevada (three nights)
• Flagstaff, Arizona
• Santa Rosa, New Mexico
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Emporia, Kansas: Home at last

Tour guides provided for the following locations:

• Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Boulder City
• Grand Canyon National Park

Museums:

• Smoky Hill Museum, Salina, Kansas
• Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, Colorado
• Mojave Museum of History and Arts and Route 66 Museum, Kingman, Arizona
• Rainbow Forest Museum, Petrified Forest National Park, Holbrook, Arizona
• Kwahadi Museum of the American Indian, Amarillo, Texas
• Oklahoma City National Memorial, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

What I learned on a ten-day bus tour:

• Ten days on a bus is about three too many
• Our route required us to reset our watches four times
• Hotel beds are too high for short people

The best of all:

Travel is a treasure trove of ideas for future stories, poems, and novels.

Come back to see how those develop.