Dodge City (Thursday)

Well, it is winter here again.  It was 34 when we went to bed last night, with a chill factor of 25.  Temperature had dropped 54 degrees in Liberal from the day before, and 45 degrees here in Dodge.  And we had a smattering of snow greet us.  Joe almost missed it because he wouldn't get out of bed, and it was melting away pretty quickly.  When I did the laundry in Liberal when it was 92 degrees, I thought I was putting away the jeans and sweatshirts for the season, but we got them right back out yesterday, and I dug our sock caps out today, along with our heavy coats.

Here's a picture of the grain elevators I mentioned in yesterday's blog that would block the wind when we drove past.  There were several of these right along the highway, which were also alongside the railroad tracks.  We heard on the news tonight that this year's projected wheat harvest for the state of Kansas is 313 million bushels, so I guess that would take a lot of grain elevators.

As we drove into Dodge City yesterday, we were greeted by El Capitan, a bronze statute commemorating the 1870s/1880s Texas cattle drives to Dodge City.  Coming into town from the other direction is another pretty interesting sign.  There are a lot of these artistic kinds of signs around town, called "pole art banners."

Whenever we are at home and Joe remembers, he watches Gunsmoke at noon on ME TV.  So he was happy to be here, and I think he really expected to run into Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke Street.  We also drove up and down Wyatt Earp Blvd. several times but didn't see him either.  There have been so many movies made about the real historical people who lived here, such as Wyatt Earp,  Bat Masterson and Doc Holiday, that we almost forgot Matt Dillon wasn't a real person here. 

We went into the Boot Hill Museum, which was very nice, and then out the back door to Boot Hill Cemetery.  The people buried here usually had no family and no money, and were buried with their boots on, that's how it got its name.  One gravestone had the same name as an old Indiana friend/classmate of ours, Ed Williams, so we will have to show that to him sometime.

We stopped in the jail, then headed down to the Long Branch Saloon, where Joe shared a sasparillo with me.

These buildings on Front Street were all connected, so we were able to continue on from the saloon without going back outside into the cold weather.  There were probably 8 different businesses represented, including a pharmacy/doctor's office, a shoe cobbler, printing company, undertaker, bank, to name a few.

There was also a display of baby carriages and basinettes.  I thought Bridgette might be interested in this stroller as a jogging stroller for Shooter.

Other buildings right here were a gunsmith, a school, and a church.  This area was set up nicely, and in the summer they have gunfights and other events, and in the saloon there is a variety show (with Miss Kitty) at night.

We finished up here and headed to the outskirts of town in search of one of two small herds of longhorns.  Fortunately, they were within sight of the road.  We later found the second herd on the other side of town.

Next, we headed south of town on Hwy 400 to Fort Dodge, which served as a supply depot and base of operation against warring Indians from 1865-1882.  It is now a Kansas Soldiers' Home.  The third picture was a structure across the road and I thought it looked more like a fort, but we couldn't find any identification on it and it was fenced off.

Just a couple miles further down this road was the Coronado Cross.  Standing 38' tall, it marks the spot where Francisco Vasques de Coronado, a Spanish explorer, is said to have crossed the Arkansas River in search of the fabled "Cities of Gold" in 1541.  We drove around looking for the Arkansas River and realized we had crossed it yesterday as we came into town, but it didn't have any water in it so we didn't realize that was it.

The only wildlife we saw today was a rabbit, which I thought looked different from our usual, and maybe was a snowshoe hare, but Joe thought it was just a jackrabbit.

 We were done exploring at this point, so Joe kindly stopped at the Boot Hill Casino so we could check it out.  Unlike most other casinos, this one is owned by the state instead of an Indian tribe.  But, unfortunately, those slots were not any looser than the Indian ones.  This is actually next door to United Wireless Arena, a sports complex, and we can see this from our campground.

After a stop at Walmart to pick up a few groceries, we headed back to the RV to rest for a while.  We decided Dodge City would probably be a good place to have a nice steak dinner since we are in cattle country, so that's how we finished our visit here -- a rib-eye for Joe and a filet mignon for me at Casey's Cowtown Club.  Both were delicious.

 It remained in the 40s all day here, but the wind finally quieted down just before sunset, so when we got back from dinner Joe did his maintenance (dumping the tanks and hooking up the car) so he doesn't have much to do outside in the morning when it will again be freezing.  Tomorrow, we are "gettin' out of Dodge."

Liberal, Kansas (Wednesday)

The wind shook the RV all night and just howled all day.  Our agenda this morning was Dorothy's House and the Land of the Wizard of Oz.  This is a wonderful museum.  I don't think I've ever actually seen that movie, but they did a great job here.  A home built in 1907 was restored to reflect the Gale farmhouse.    You check in at the Coronado Museum next door, then follow the yellow brick road to Dorothy's House.

You can buy a brick for $65 and have it "engraved."  Some famous people have bricks here including Liza Minelli (Judy Garland's daughter) and President and Nancy Reagan.

The rooms and furnishings are that same as the movie.  It was amazing how much of the "artifacts" here and in the museum are things that Joe and I can remember at our grandparents' homes.

Something we had never seen was a "mustache cup," designed to keep the waxed mustaches dry when these old guys drank their coffee.

Another interesting display was an old Sears & Roebuck catalog from around 1938, I think.  They had enlarged some of the catalog items, including a picture of a house that you could order and put together by number.  The house that Joe's mother lives in is one of those houses, and it strongly resembles this picture.

From there our tour guide took us over to the Land of Oz, and that was a WOW.  She took us on a route with movie sets from the movie, and she "reenacted" the gist of the movie.  After school and on weekends, they have school children dress as Dorothy and guide these tours, describing everything in first person.  But the kids were in school, and our tour guide did a great job.  She had a little girl's voice and made it very interesting, but she did it in third person.  Here's some of the sets.

Of course, the main characters were represented as well, Scarecrow (without a brain), Tin Man (without a heart), and Cowardly Lion (without any courage).  And the witch.

We finished up here and went back over to the Coronado Museum.  Here are some of the artifacts from here.  My maternal grandmother had a Victrola, and a Singer treadle sewing machine.   My paternal grandparents had the wood cook stove.  I would love to take my mother and sister here and let them reminisce with me about some of this old stuff.

There were several statues on corners on the main thoroughfare in town of Dorothy and Toto.  And a great picture of a "horse of a different color," although the one in the museum was just white.

We loved this museum and would recommend a stop here to anyone coming through.  If we come through here again, we would go back but try to time it when Dorothy is one of the kids.  I think they have kids dressed as the Tin Man, Scarecrow, etc., as well.

One other interesting tidbit, when the author was writing about the "land," he didn't know what he was going to call it.  Next to his desk was a 4-drawer file cabinet, with the files separated alphabetically by drawer, e.g., A-D, E-I, J-N, and O-Z.  He saw the OZ, and that's where the name came from.

We drove back to the Campground.  It was extremely windy and I wasn't sure if we were traveling today but you know Joe, the old ex-truckdriver.  Nothing scares him.  So we decamped, hooked up the car, and off we went to Dodge City.  It was only 80 miles away, and he was sure he could do that.  He had to crank on the steering wheel all day to stay halfway in our lane, and it was funny, as we came past these rows of grain elevators, which would block the wind for a few seconds, we would end up in the other lane.  The a gust would hit us as we cleared the elevators, and push us to the other side of the road.  This was not a day for the faint of heart to be driving an RV.  It was 51 degrees when I got up, had dropped to 44 by the time we pulled out about 11:00 a.m., and continued dropping all day.  It was was 36 when we went to bed, and 36 when I got up, but we got a smattering of snow overnight. 

Dorothy's House and the Land of the Wizard of Oz was an Excellent Adventure.  The drive on to Dodge City was also an adventure, but I'm not sure I would classify it as "excellent." 

From Cimarron to Liberal, KS (Tuesday)

This morning we are leaving this beautiful campground, Tolby, in the Cimarron State Park and heading to Liberal, Kansas.  After much cajoling, I got Joe out of bed about 8:00, and we de-camped.  There was no water available at the campsite, but they did have it at the pump house, so we drove down to that building and hooked up 2 hoses to refill our water tank.  That took a little time, but once that was filled, we were ready to hit the road.  They will officially open this park tomorrow (including turning the water on at the campsites), along with the other state parks in New Mexico (May 1).  Most of the campsites here were short, but otherwise this was a great place.  We didn't see any deer along the 20-mile stretch we drove Sunday night when we saw the 59 deer. 

From Cimarron, we took Hwy 21, a change in plans, but it turned out to be a beautiful drive along the original Santa Fe Trail.

This route took us past the huge Philmont Boy Scout ranch, which was scattered over several acres.  I didn't take any pictures of the main complex, but we did stop at a secondary area, and there was framework for lots of tents here, along with an old church, and other buildings.

We really enjoyed this drive, through miles and miles of open prairie, with an occasional scrubby area thrown in.  We saw pronghorn all day long, even into Oklahoma.  And Joe saw 3 wild turkeys when I was back fixing snacks.  While the Midwest is flooding, the west is extremely dry, and New Mexico is no exception.  Most of the rivers we drove along should have been running full, but were little more than streams in many places, and many of the water tanks and ponds are either really low or completely dried up, and this is April, when they should be getting snowmelt and spring rains.  The fire danger around Taos was "moderate" but most of the other areas was "high."  Hate to see that so early in the season.

We are always on the lookout for wildlife, and as we were both scanning the open prairie we almost missed 6 deer lying under a shade tree right beside the road.  We were upon them before we even saw them, and they were probably not more than 30 feet from the road.  Our route took us through the town of Clayton, but I missed the town sign.  We were hoping to find a place to pull off for lunch, but didn't see anything so we drove on through.

Right after we got out of town, an emergency vehicle passed us with its lights and siren on, then a state police car came screaming past us, probably going 100 mph.  We never did come up them again so don't know where they went.  We crossed the state line into Oklahoma at 12:35.  The temperature outside keeps creeping up.  It was 41 when I got up and now it's 90.  We are not liking that.  Finally had to turn the A/C on and roll up the windows.  We found a picnic area just across the state line, which happened to be real close to the water tank for a bunch of cattle.  We so had lunch with the cows today.  The wind was blowing in the right direction though, so we didn't get any cow smells with our food.

We fueled in Guymon, OK for $3.459 (of course we saw it 10 cents cheaper in the next town), and arrived in Liberal about 4:45, Kansas (we lost an hour when we crossed into Oklahoma).  We stayed a Seven Winds CG but I would not recommend it.  It was a Passport America CG (which means we get a 50% discount since we are members) but it seems to have been taken over by construction workers or something.  Not very clean, they didn't have WiFi cards available yet.  They did have showers and laundry, which we used, but they weren't the greatest.  After I finished the laundry, we drove into Liberal for dinner and to get a better WiFi signal since the one at the CG wasn't very strong.  So we spent 2 hours in McDonalds posting the last 3 days of the blog.  It's very frustrating when I don't have WiFi in the RV, since we have our own Hotspot.  But if we don't have a phone signal, the Hotspot doesn't work since it operates off the phone signal too, and when we camp in state parks out in the national forests, we usually don't have a phone signal. 

We got back to the RV about 10:00, and the wind had started to pick up.  It's supposed to really blow tomorrow and a cold front is coming through.  (Sure hope it doesn't bring any tornadoes my way.)  We are going in to see Dorothy's house (Wizard of Oz) in the morning and plan on moving on to Dodge City to see if Matt Dillon is still hanging around there, but we may have to hang out here for a day if the weather is too bad.  We have left the mountains of New Mexico, regrettably.  That part of NM is really beautiful, and we would like to return with our quads some day.