If the title of this post wasn't already long enough, I would have added the words "The Final Chapter" or just "Finally" or "The Suck Zone" or "Storm Chaser Edition" or "Passage Through Tornado Alley" or...

I don't know. There were a lot of different ways I could have gone with it.

In case you haven't been tuning in before, here are the first three installments of the Pioneer Woman saga...

A Tale of Two Pioneer Women - Part 1

A Tale of Two Pioneer Women - Part 2

A Tale of Two Pioneer Women - Part 3

Hey, I refer to this portion of my website as 'Ramblings'. There's a reason why.

Anyhow, here... we... go. The final installment...

After a day of beautiful scenery, company and food, it was time to head back to where from whence we came. For some of us that was Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, etc... For others (us) it was more like Colorado and Nebraska, which is a titch farther away. We decided to get in a little driving that night before we hunkered down in a hotel somewhere.

Goodbye, mustangs...

Goodbye, sweeping Oklahoma plains...

Hello, dark and ominous storm clouds...

What?!?

I was trying to keep the Kansas / Wizard of Oz jokes to a minimum, but the tornado warnings for a certain Kansas county as we were entering a certain Kansas county were making me feel a little too Dorothy-ish. The bad news was that, of course, there were tornado warnings. The good news was that we seemed to be driving out of the stormy area.

We safely, soundly and thankfully made it to our hotel room for the evening. The next morning, however, we awoke to the threat of more bad weather on the news, in the direction that we were about to travel. We waited awhile until the radar showed that the storm had passed over, then headed west.

For the most part it was smooth sailing, but for a bit the sky did look like this...

Dark. Ominous. Nasty. I kept hearing that growling sound in my head that played in the movie 'Twister' every time a tornado was in the distance.

One passenger remained blissfully unaware...

Ah, to be young, blissful and unaware again.

Soon we were past the storms and spent the majority of our trip under blue skies and happy white clouds that floated quietly above. I dropped off Marigold Maesa, then Miss Peaches and I made our ascent back to the mountains. 

Oh, the mountains. Peaceful. Quiet. Non-tornadic.

Dark and ominous in their own right, but it's more of an, "I'm big and immovable," way than an, "I'm going to suck you up," way.

"Welcome back, Farmer Gal," they said. "We're still glorious."

There's no place like home.