Clicking our Heals

Starting to head back to the big ticket places in Northern Arizona, Utah and Colorado for spring, we were in all kinds of places. Initially a fair bit of time on I49 passing the ‘Slim Chickins’ ‘Chuck – E- Cheese’ and ‘Chick-fil-A’ outlets (all junk food eateries) we skirted through Missouri, briefly, via a one horse town called Noel, which had nothing other than trains, from Canada oddly, and empty buildings on its main street. The outlying areas of it were lovely though, on the River Elk. Plenty of nice houses, agriculture and chicken farms! We ended the day in Oklahoma, at Natural Falls State Park, 3 states in one day!

At the park is ‘Dripping Springs ‘ a stunning, but not particularly big, waterfall that certainly rewarded the hike to get to it. Sunlight danced on the water and created a rainbow at the base, it is one of the prettiest we can recall (of many!) Continuing on we couldn’t be bothered to spend ’24 hours in Tulsa’ as there isn’t much there and one of us was worried the other wouldn’t come home (after listening to the lyrics which are pretty shocking actually!) Instead, a functional stop close by near Keystone Reservoir and the birds of prey.

Oklahoma to Kansas was a bit like driving snakes and ladders, every road was North, South, East or West and we wanted to go diagonally, clicking my heals made no difference. We’d left the rolling hills of OK to the flat landscape of Kansas so it was agriculture, chemical plants and gambling establishments. No Wichita line men to hang out with, we drove on through the tribal lands of the Osage Nation, Cherokee Nation and Ponca Tribe to name a few. It’s not just Kansas, all tribal lands have casino’s and they are immense, with huge roadside advertising screens to lure folks in and we’ve never seen an empty car park at any of them. We had a rest stop at Tonkawa at a fab coffee shop, that’s student towns for you. Great Americana signage as always.

Primarily, Kansas seemed to be farming, farming and more farming, peppered with large grain silos and businesses selling agricultural machinery. It did make for amazing vistas across, seeing for miles and we resisted clicking our heels and looking for Toto. We did note that Dorothy now has a much more stable house though and we saw no witches on brooms, even if we did see dust devils whirling across the plains.

There are ‘8 Wonders of Kansas’ and one of them is The Big Well so we thought we’d take a look. The town of Greensburg, home of The Big Well was wiped out in a tornado in 2007. The first ever of the EF-5 category, it was 2 miles wide and 95% of the towns buildings were lost. In rebuilding the museum, they have done a great job of bringing that time to life and showing the resilience of the people in the face of disaster. The reason The Big Well is a ‘wonder’ is that it claims to be the “Deepest, hand dug well in the World”. We all love the American, our toy is bigger than your toy stuff, but in this case… wrong! The true numero uno is in Orvieto, Italy and to be fair, the lady at the museum confessed to that! The Big Well was built in 1887 and only took 9 months. The museum did also have a ‘The Worlds Largest Pallasite’ from a meteor shower that also had a correction sticker…. ‘one of the….’ !! Anyhow, we learned a lot about tornados, Kansas weather systems, community spirit and rebuilding ‘green’.

We enjoy stumbling across oddities, none more so than a roadside ‘attraction’ on our way to Dodge City. Known as M.T. Liggett’s Art Environment its a massive showcase of his metal sculptures for want of a better description. Many wouldn’t be allowed at home, for a plethora of reasons but even so, it was very creative stuff to distract the traffic. The journey to Dodge City had a certain aroma as we passed massive feed lots of crammed in cattle, yuk; slaughter and processing houses, double yuk and grain silos full of the fattening up stuff and steroids no doubt, triple yuk.

We needed to get outta Dodge but thought we should at least explore the old downtown before we did. Not that there is much old downtown to be had really. There were some great murals and we found another ‘Muffler Man’, this one (and another nearby) having been donated by Dennis Hopper’s family after his death as he was a collector, and lived in Dodge as a child. Known as La Salsa Man, he’s 26ft tall. Dodge was founded in 1872 along the Santa Fe Railway, handy for shipping the thousands of hunted buffalo East, causing the decimation of the herds. These cattle drives resulted in the saloons and hotels by the side of the tracks and the new ‘city’ having no laws meaning it was a literal wild west place, Gambling and thieves don’t mix. Anyhow, the museum had The worlds Largest Hairball on display, we’ll take their word for it eh?! Found in a cows stomach, more yuk!

After more flat land, fields, cattle crammed into pens, silos etc all likely for the burger munching populations around the Americas, we left Kansas and arrived in Colorado. It was ‘Super Tuesday’ which we understood to be part of a TV game show called US politics. Think there maybe a ‘What Me? Wednesday’ starring Trump and a ‘Trip Up Thursday’ starring Biden at some stage… Anyway, plenty of flags around and pop ups on the phone. It’s no surprise that some seem to have lost their sense of decency and what being part of a civilised society is about. That includes the bloke who made a pretty rude gesture at us as he didn’t like my driving… I think! At least our camping at La Junta was quiet, among the old rail carriages and locos the owner is doing up for rentals! We don’t get design like that anymore!

Having driven across primarily flat lands for quite a while, the mountains of Colorado, appearing ahead of us, looming under a pretty serious weather system was a sight we hadn’t seen since the Canadian Rockies. Driving towards the storm, the beauty and scale of the natural landscape was jaw dropping and immense. Fred made it up to La Veta Pass at 9422ft, he’s never been that high before, where there was snow on the tree’s still and weather warnings on the signs. Driving, it was like looking at a Black & White landscape photo ahead, the weather taking the colour out of the views but adding to the drama.

The road took us back down to 7.5k ft and we were in the San Luis Valley. A vast flat area sat in a bowl of glorious mountains, but exposing everything to the winds and sleet, whipping across. Blanca Peak was stunning, well to be honest, it was a magical and dramatic 360 degree view. Small isolated snow storms over the mountain peaks and glancing sunlight poking through from the blue skies beyond, reflecting off the snow.

The reason we were in that neck of the woods was to visit Great Sand Dunes National Park. Perhaps a quirk of geology, the dunefield is 30 sq miles of sand, squeezed into that area from dried river beds over millions of years. Winds continually carving new forms and eroding old ones. It is a spectacular place, in the foothills of Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In temperatures not much higher than freezing we headed out, not quite Lawrence of Arabia, more like characters from ‘Carry On Camel’. The winds whipped up the sand, blasting us as we strode, angled against the force of nature. Visibly seeing the sand cresting over the dune edges and our footsteps disappearing as quickly as we made them.

The sand glistened in the light before us, before removing the skin off our faces but it was all in the name of exploration, think Shackleton in the antarctic! Aside, it is a stunning natural landscape, ever changing but not disappearing due to the recirculatory nature of the weather and snow melt systems. It’s very atmospheric especially with the biblical weather looming and it genuinely was worth the effort although hiking up the 700ft high dunes, the tallest in the US, was off the cards. In contrast to White Sand Dunes, he had no problem getting a photo without footprints this time! We warmed up and headed away, the tumbleweed whizzing across the road before the snow started falling.