A boundary
August 14, 2013

An hour or so ago, we crossed a boundary.  It’s a very important one although unseen and unmarked.  You don’t know it’s coming up, but you surely do know when you’ve crossed over it.  For me, it is the line that marks the western region of the country from the eastern.

Both before and after crossing that line was plains country, mostly flat grassland, but both sides are very different from each other nevertheless.  Heading west, the sky seems higher, bluer, the earth’s surface and the air feel dryer.  Far, far in the distance is the first hint of the Rocky Mountains, so faint at first that a person can’t be absolutely positive they actually see the peaks.

Suddenly, the idea of hiking off across the landscape seems sensible, no worries about chiggers and mosquitoes.  Suddenly, this person has a sense of homecoming, most welcome after eight months away, the longest stretch I’ve ever been out of the West.

We are traveling on Colorado Highway 10 as it leads us up a gradual incline as the topography transforms from rolling prairie interrupted more and more by isolated hills and low ridges.

As we pull over to the side of the road to put up our feet and have a bite of lunch in the trailer, we spot an old buffalo wallow that was transected by the highway.  The plains are pocked by these spots: shallow depressions that collected rainwater, invitations to the buffalo herds that once ranged here to have a good roll in the water and mud.  Each time another animal enjoyed a wallow, it would extract more of the mud on its thick coat, thus continually deepening and enlarging the depression.

Only this morning? . . .

As our elevation steadily increases, the countryside is more dotted with juniper and now miles of sunflowers. 

It was only a few short hours ago we were preparing to depart from Garden City, Kansas, as a solid dark wall of rain bore down on us.  Luckily, we had not unhooked when we pulled in the night before, so had not quite as much to accomplish before heading out.  Even then, the storm caught us and we left as the park was awash in a torrent of violent rain.

We were happy to drive out from under the downpour in a fairly short while, but not without great sympathy for those folks in the regions we’ve left behind.  They are completely saturated, yet the rain continues - pools, puddles, swamps, lakes overflowing, rivers backed up far beyond their capacity, and voracious mosquitoes are out in force.  I shudder to think about how many times I’ve been bitten in the past weeks - thoroughly unpleasant!

I know next to nothing about Garden City, having spent but one night there in a relatively scuzzy semi-permanent lodgers RV park, and having been unable to leave the windows open due to the overwhelming stockyards odors, but in that short span, one very cool thing happened.  As we were unloading the truck, a Mississippi kite swooped by me and perched on a nearby pole to have his portrait made.

 Medicine Lodge, Carrie Nation . . .

Because this day was a leisurely schedule, we stopped to try our luck with another museum (slow learners) in Medicine Lodge.  This was the Stockade Museum in addition to the home of Carrie Nation, that infamous temperance fanatic.  The stockade was a fortress replica, home to yet another collection of paraphernalia from days gone by, but many steps up from our last museum experience

In addition to the artifacts on display, there was a metal jail contraption that had been removed from the basement of the county courthouse.  It was a rather horrifying look at historic imprisonment conditions: two cells each about seven feet square with four bunks apiece.  A narrow “room” in front allowed the jailer to open cell doors so that prisoners could have access to it.

The stockade also had a hewn log cabin with the history of the Smith family that resided there along with period furnishings.  It was a small tidy house with two second floor rooms accessed by a narrow corner staircase.  I thought the exterior design over the porch was interesting and unique with windows in each room facing each other.

The other highlight at this stop was Carrie Nation’s house.  Our stockade hostess closed the museum door to take us to the Nation home next door and to fill us in on Carrie’s shenanigans.  Our guide had studied the woman in question thoroughly; she knew all about Carrie’s ax-slinging ways as she busted up one saloon after another and was arrested and jailed time after time.

We were informed that Carrie’s first husband was an alcoholic who died of the effects.  Mr. Nation, her second husband, evidently took umbrage at his mate’s carryings-on and divorced her.

Medicine Lodge puts on a pageant that evidently incorporates various unrelated historical events, including a Carrie Nation impersonator and an Indian/Anglo peace treaty signing.  It sounds as if it would be great fun to attend.

Gypsum hills . . .

We enjoyed the picturesque Flint Hills of Kansas on another trip, but did not know about the Gypsum Hills.  The route that took us through Medicine Lodge is new for us; we were very happy to experience the landscape's beauty this direction.  Red dirt here is highlighted through the green grass lushness and all is punctuated with the darker cedar trees.  Buttes and valleys are atypical of what we think of for the Sunflower State.  It’s all just really, really enchanting, makes me want to take off on a dirt road explore, but that will have to be another time when we’re not hauling the trailer.

 

As we pulled away from one of our stops in the Gypsum Hills, I spotted a ring-necked pheasant, a new bird for this trip.  Our eight-month list has gotten so long that it's getting harder and harder to get new ones.  We have now traded in the eastern bird book for the western version.


Getting lost, Dodge City, Fort Dodge . . .


For our navigation, we are utilizing a nice National Geographic atlas; unfortunately, we have been using it for a number of years and it has become outdated as road numbers and interchanges change.  And that is our reason for taking a wrong turn coming into Dodge City, or so explains the driver of this rig.

He soon realized the problem and got us turned around and headed in the correct direction.  We were excited to come to Dodge City on a previous trip, that is until we discovered the powers-that-be had opted to raze their historic commercial district and to replace it with a tourist-trap false-front row of buildings that would not pass muster even in a very old western film.

We were fairly disgusted with that line of action, but we still get a good laugh when we remember the so-called scenic overlook there.  Of course we would never pass up such as that, so quickly pulled out and were startled to discover that we were overlooking the extensive stockyards!

Nearby Fort Dodge has a nice veterans' home, the grounds of which we wandered a bit.  It put me in mind of Fort Whipple in Prescott.

Fascinating that when a tree burned here, the flames seem to have consumed roots and all.