Day 4 – June 13, 2009
We left the hotel at 6 AM and traveled 500 miles to Garden City, Kansas. It was cold and damp for the first 100 miles or so and I was glad I had brought my heated jacket. Kansas has been a constant change all day. Parts of route 50 are 2 lane country road and others are 4 lane divided while still other locations are multi-lane super slabs. You can drive for well over 100 miles and never put your feet down and not see a curve in 10 to 20 miles or more. The terrain ranged from flat to mountainous to rolling hills. At one point it was flat on one side of the highway and rolling hills with sage brush on the other. And the wind never stopped blowing over the flat, empty fields. As we moved further west in Kansas the trees began to disappear until now around Garden City you see very few. The smell of cattle hangs heavy in the air from the numerous feed lots. I have never seen so many cattle in one place before. Oil rigs dot the fields as do the huge grain bins located in just about every town. You can see for miles and I know the fields belong to someone but you don’t see a farm or even a house near. Our goal for the day was Dodge City but when we arrived there were no rooms available. At the first hotel we sat in the parking lot and called every hotel listed in the GPS and found all to be filled. There were 3 big events taking place this weekend, so that is why we pushed on. But we did stop to see Dodge City and what a bust. A small section of the town is made up like a ‘movie set’ with the old store fronts and wooden walks. Since we had an hour to ride and it was already 6 PM we decided not to spend the $15 or the time to walk around. We did stop at Kinsley, Kansas for a rest and to take some pictures of the sign in the middle of the country.
We left the hotel at 6 AM and traveled 500 miles to Garden City, Kansas. It was cold and damp for the first 100 miles or so and I was glad I had brought my heated jacket. Kansas has been a constant change all day. Parts of route 50 are 2 lane country road and others are 4 lane divided while still other locations are multi-lane super slabs. You can drive for well over 100 miles and never put your feet down and not see a curve in 10 to 20 miles or more. The terrain ranged from flat to mountainous to rolling hills. At one point it was flat on one side of the highway and rolling hills with sage brush on the other. And the wind never stopped blowing over the flat, empty fields. As we moved further west in Kansas the trees began to disappear until now around Garden City you see very few. The smell of cattle hangs heavy in the air from the numerous feed lots. I have never seen so many cattle in one place before. Oil rigs dot the fields as do the huge grain bins located in just about every town. You can see for miles and I know the fields belong to someone but you don’t see a farm or even a house near. Our goal for the day was Dodge City but when we arrived there were no rooms available. At the first hotel we sat in the parking lot and called every hotel listed in the GPS and found all to be filled. There were 3 big events taking place this weekend, so that is why we pushed on. But we did stop to see Dodge City and what a bust. A small section of the town is made up like a ‘movie set’ with the old store fronts and wooden walks. Since we had an hour to ride and it was already 6 PM we decided not to spend the $15 or the time to walk around. We did stop at Kinsley, Kansas for a rest and to take some pictures of the sign in the middle of the country.
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