On the Road: Oakley, Kansas to Pueblo, Colorado

Made it to Pueblo, Colorado today, which isn't at all bad, considering I worked until around 2:00PM. Gaining an hour as I passed into the Mountain Time zone helped. Before leaving Oakley, I stopped in at the local fossil museum. There are signs advertising the place all around town. It turned out to be in a corner of the library, on the edge of town--a small collection of fossils and rocks not very well displayed. The woman at the museum seemed to feel the most interesting thing to see was not the fossils but the "art." The art turned out to be garishly colored pictures embellished with things like fossilized shark vetebrae for tree trunks and the like.... I'm afraid it wasn't worth the detour.

Then I headed out toward Monument Rocks (chalk formations in the middle of the plains), which would have been interesting I'm sure, but they turned out to be seven miles down an unpaved road. I decided to save the time and wear on my tires.

I headed west on Highway 40, through Sharon Springs and into Colorado by way of Cheyenne Wells and Wild Horse. I then took SR94 straight through to Colorado Springs before diverting south to Pueblo. Eastern Colorado was rather flat and uninteresting, like Kansas, but eventually the terrain got hillier. Just west of Cheyenne Wells I passed through a town called Firstview. I imagine that from here the rockies first come into view as you head west, but the sky was dark and I didn't see the mountains until the following morning. Much of the drive across eastern Colorado was spent outrunning huge electrical storms that were a bit scary. I think I would have felt safer in a car with a hardtop. I got lucky. My route headed between two big thunderheads and then by driving very fast, I put the last of the big ones behind me. I have no photos to post today, because there wasn't much worth photographing. I would have photographed the storms, but wasn't really equipped to.

On the Road: Kansas City to Oakley, Kansas (Summer 2009)

I got a slow start today. I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, but, today being Sunday,  it didn't open until noon, so I lost several hours in the morning. As a result, I didn't get as far west as I had hoped to. I am now in Oakley, Kansas. I arrived in the middle of another severe thunder storm, having woken up to one in Independence, Missouri this morning.

I'm glad I got to the museum, though. It's an excellent collection, strong in American art of the region, but also with a good collection of European painting, Asian art, and Near-Eastern art. The painting here is by Victor Higgins (1884-1949). Higgins was a member of the Taos Society of Artists. The painting dates from around 1926. It's a good example of the excellent regional art in the collection. I enjoyed seeing Thomas Hart Benton's Persephone, a funny painting that I've seen reproduced many times over the years. The museum opened in 1933, so it would have been new when my father knew it.

I left Kansas City at around 3:00PM. I had hoped to get to Colorado Springs, Colorado tonight, but, because of the storm, I decided to stay in Oakley. Just before Oakley, in Victoria, Kansas, I stopped to see St. Fidelis Church, known as "The Cathedral on the Plains." Tomorrow I'll start to cross the Rockies.

On the Road: Manhattan, Kansas to Hannibal, Missouri (Summer 2009)

I left Manhattan, Kansas late in the morning and headed for Kansas City (I learned that Manhattan was founded by abolitionists from the East Coast--hence the name). The scenery on the interstate was not much to look at. Got off a couple of times to look around, once at Alma, which was a tiny town, interesting for its old stone buildings made from the local limestone. Later I stopped at a winery, that turned out to be making mostly elderberry wine. I searched in vain for a place making vinifera (true wine grape) wines from locally grown grapes.

I went through Topeka, to Kansas City. I wanted to see the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, but it was closed. My father remembers this museum from his youth, as it is right around the corner from the high school he attended, Rockport High School, which I had a quick look at. Decided to move on to St. Louis but then reconsidered and diverted north to Hannibal by way of Highways 54, 19, and 61.

A big chunk of work has just come in, so I may stay here in Hannibal a second night, as I will have to do this and get it off to Tokyo as my top priority for tomorrow. When I can, I will head down the Mississippi on Highway 79 to St. Louis before heading further east.

On the Road: First Impression of Kansas (Summer 2009)

This was about ten miles into Kansas, on Route 77 South, heading toward Manhattan, Kansas, which turned out to have a nice little Holiday Inn with an attached restaurant called Houlihan's that offers real food (at last).

On the Road: Take the High Road (Summer 2009)

I was slightly taken aback this morning when, while bird watching, I realized that a lot of the weeds growing by the roadside were Cannabis. It seems to be everywhere in this part of Nebraska--apparently not cultivated. One man I spoke with referred to it disdainfully as "ditchweed."

On the Road: Ogallala, Nebraska to Manhattan, Kansas

Left Ogallala, headed east later than I had intended and made slow progress at first. Stopped at Sutherland Reservoir, but saw nothing of interest, except cliff swallows nesting under a bridge over the Platte River. Much of my route today followed the river, which runs in numerous shallow channels. The road crosses and recrosses many forks.

In North Platte, stopped at the Golden Spike Tower, which is an observation tower Union Pacific has constructed for tourists. It allows a bird's-eye view of the Bailey Classification Yard, the largest rail switching and classification yard in the world, so they say. Frankly, it wasn't much to look at, but interesting enough that I don't regret the detour (see photo).

Much of the rail traffic here seems to be coal trains bringing coal down from the area around Casper, Wyoming. They get routed here, mostly to power plants in the east, in places like Cincinnati, and Boston, and New York, and Washington. For the past two days I've been seeing the trains everywhere, some of them with as many as 200 cars.

Last night, coming into Ogallala from Scottsbluff, the road ran parallel to the North Platte River and more or less to the rail lines. I happened to start on the road just as the sun was going down. In the rear-view mirror, it was no longer visible, but light was coursing over the horizon, as various objects in the landscape were still catching the last glow. One of the coal trains appeared ahead of me at a point where the track was at a slight angle to the road. The coal cars are typically polished aluminum (or so they appear to be) with vertical, beveled ribs. Each car was neatly mounded with coal. The cars look like hundreds of perfect, but perfectly burned pound cakes in baking tins. The ribs on the cars began to catch the pink light and the whole train was lit up as if with hundreds of neon tubes standing on end--actually the bevels of the ribs reflecting the last pink rays of the sun at me. It was rather extraordinary. It lasted only about seven minutes. The first minute or two I wasn't able to understand what I was seeing. It reminded me of the gaudy neon lights at the casinos in Reno.