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.