Where’s Nico?

Well, it took me the entire trip but I’m finally using an 80’s song that is one of the first songs I think of when I think of 80’s – “Our House” by Madness! It’s a super fun ska hit from 1983, and I’ll bet you can already guess why I chose it as we get to the question of where Nico is currently residing…

Our house! It’s in the middle of our street!

(Well, okay… the picture above is actually from Loose Park, which is about a mile from our house…)

That’s right! After a fun trip to the Pacific Northwest, we got back home a few days back to our beloved hometown of Kansas City. It was another great trip, and before we got home we did have a few more adventures.

One interesting adventure was during a nice walk along the beach by our campsite at South Beach in Olympic National Park. As we were walking, we saw something along the beach just past the water. As we approached it, we realized that it was a very small (about three foot long) Pacific common thresher shark.

He was still alive, but seemed to be in not great shape. We went ahead and grabbed him by the tail and drug him back out into the water. He was pretty heavy for his size, but he seemed too weak to be a threat to swing back and try to bite me. Thresher sharks got their name because of their long tails, which they use to literally thresh against other sea life to stun or kill them, but this guy was small even for a baby thresher so he didn’t pose much of a threat. Here’s a pic of him as he was getting back into the water.

We didn’t see him again, but hopefully he recovered and is doing okay.

The next day, we headed out a little earlier than usual to catch the tidepools at Beach #4, which were really impressive.

(These are baby sculpins, which reminded me of one of my favorite beers – Sculpin IPA!)

(Nico was cool with the tidepooling, but less cool with the ocean current…)

And on our last night in South Beach, we got the nicest sunset of the stay!

At that point, it was time to start heading back to KC, which is a multi-day trip. We first stopped back at Lake Selmac so we could enjoy a river day along the Illy, which we’ve done multiple times now in our outings but which never gets old. We like to park at the Illinois River Road at the trailhead for the Snailback Trail, and from there, it’s maybe a half mile hike past blackberry brambles to get to an isolated spot along the Illy River. It’s always a fun place to hop in the water, check out the frogs and water snakes in the area, do a few crosswords, have some beers and enjoy the day, picking plenty of ripe blackberries to take with us on the way back.

From there, we basically did four days of driving, stopping in Winnemucca, NV, Rock Springs, WY, and Kearney, NE before getting home. It’s kind of a long drive, but totally worth it for the adventures it offers us!

It was a wonderful trip once again, but as Dorothy says…

Now that we’re home, we have a long list of things to do, between trying to clean up the mess of a lawn we found upon our return to cleaning up and doing maintenance on the trailer and truck, and a laundry list of other projects. But it still always feels good to be back!

ANA (Ask Nico Anything)

Nico, I know you prefer being on the road to being back in KC, but please tell me about some things you’re excited to do now that you’re home

Wel, der ees anuder Bark at des Park game wid de Royalz een a few weaks, and Nico like dat. And today, mama and papa tuk Nico to hiz favrate crep resront fur brekfes, wich es gud and to de farmer markit. Plus Nico exsite to see frens. But Nico do likes to make mama and papa feel giltey for come home, so I do pose like dis sumtime.

Nico, do you mind us asking all these questions?

Yes. But I gess dis wat cum wid celeberty so wat can Nico do?

Nico, how come your papa only does blog posts while you guys are on the road and not while you’re back home?

Wie yu ask Nico dis qwestin? Dis seem like qwestin for papa. But I tink papa tink yu guys mor intrest in see pics frum place udder dan Nico cowch, so maybe dat wy.

– Ken 8/29/2026