Colorado - Day 29 - eastern CO south to La Junta

La Junta KOA, La Junta
Tuesday, 29 September 2020

Last night's state campground has been serious about the statewide fire ban: they've disallowed charcoal grills, campfires, fireworks and even smoking.  Fairly comprehensive.

A lot of Meadowlarks in this area, and to me their song is as smooth and refreshing as cool water.

today's route

On the road

I passed a field full of pumpkins.  All those orange balls among the green plants seem so decorative and holiday-ish.

With just fewer than 110,000, the city of Greeley is pretty fair sized.  It spreads out for miles.  I went through a huge subdivision west of town - before I knew I was coming near Greeley - and I was struck by the cookie-cutter appearance of the houses.  This wasn't a subdivision that used the same 3 or 4 designs and varied them intermittently and used different building materials, but instead the type that used the same design throughout, with the same building materials and colors everywhere, with street after street after street looking the same.  It reminded me of a Kurt Vonnegut short story in Welcome to the Monkey House, that I think was about a man who lived in an area like this and one day couldn't make his key work in the front door of what he erroneously thought was his house, so he climbed through the kitchen window, only to be met by the man who actually lived there pointing a gun at him, accusing him of having an affair with his wife and killing him.  Nothing Vonnegut wrote was exactly lighthearted, but everything had a ring of truth, and I sure wouldn't want to live anywhere that looked like this.

I've been passing fields of depleted corn stalks and beginning to wonder why I haven't been seeing masses of roadside vendors and farm stands as I have in other states.  The few I've seen have been well-established places instead of seasonal here's-what-we've-grown kinds of places.  Colorado's different in many ways.

Almost all the area I drove through today seems to be heavily in favor of Trump - I saw the signs all over.  Also one that said, "Save Our State - Vote Republican" and another that said, "All Aboard the Trump Train."  I thought it was odd that I was passed by a bus heading west that must have been part of the Trump campaign because it was plastered with banners and signs in his favor.  A little later, I passed another bus pointing eastbound but parked by the side of the road that also was plastered with Trump campaign signs.  What I thought was odd, aside from the fact that these 2 buses were heading in opposite directions, was why they seemed to think this was an area where they needed to spend energy drumming up votes.

And I saw many Sen. Cory Gardner signs, sometimes almost exclusive of Trump signs, which seemed odd.  Gardner and former-governor John Hickenlooper are running acrimonious campaigns against each other, but unlike the presidential race they're attacking each other's records, which I think is fair, though Gardner's been complaining about what he calls Hickenlooper's negative campaign.  I'll be interested to see how this one plays out.

All day I passed farmland, grazing land, scrub land, with rolling hills for much of the drive.  I saw a few horses, a few cows grazing in fields, and several feed lots - one with maybe hundreds of crates for veal, a process that seems so inhumane I stopped eating veal when I found out about it.  And I am definitely not a vegetarian, but there are limits.

I passed quite a few very large, very green fields, some of which looked like some crop I couldn't identify (maybe winter wheat?) but others looked like grass.  Then I passed a business called Graff's Turf and realized that I was very probably seeing turf farms.

I also started seeing oil wells - some working, some not.  And one enormous wind farm that the road first cut across (so I know that farm was miles and miles wide) and then made a turn to take me lengthwise down the wind farm (which also went for miles and miles).  There's an awful lot of wind power being generated in eastern Colorado.

I came to Fort Morgan, a town of about 12,000, with a sign that said "Boyhood Home of Glenn Miller."  Actually, his family didn't move here until he was 14, having lived in 3 other states previously, but it was while he was in high school here that he decided to become a professional musician.  And there are many still who are glad he did.  After all, it's thanks to him we have Moonlight Serenade, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, and In The Mood, among many others.  He had more hits in the Top 10 than either Elvis Pressley or The Beatles, which is remarkable when you realize he was in the middle of his career when his plane disappeared during WWII.  For more information, here's a link.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Glenn-Miller

I passed a highway sign saying "High Winds Possible," but what made this one unusual is that it had a wind sock attached - like you'd see at an airfield.  So I can state with certainty that high winds were happening at that time.

I also passed a large building with an old sign identifying it as Wagner Cane Sugar Plant.  That didn't make sense to me - though I wouldn't have argued if it'd said beet sugar - so I looked it up and found that sugar cane can't grow in this climate; it has to have some place much more reliably warm, like the American South.  So I don't know what that factory used to be about.

I passed what looked like a limestone mining operation beside the road, but I didn't see a sign and can't find anything about it online so don't know for sure.

At the town of Brush, elev. 4,231', I turned south on State Highway 71, which I was on for the rest of the day.  It was a 2-lane, no-shoulder, rough-surfaced road for much of the way, and the only reason I was glad I took it is that I wanted to see more of Eastern Colorado before I left the state.

I continued to pass farm land and scrub land and cows.  I saw fields full of square bales of hay and more oil wells.

A semi driver tooted thanks to me when I found a place to pull over so he could pass me.  It's so rare I get thanked that I find they're little mood-boosters.

About 20 miles along, I came to the town of Last Chance, which itself looks like it's had its last chance.  It's said to have 23 residents, and that may be right.  At the intersection of CO 71 and US 36 that was probably once its hub, there're nothing but abandoned buildings (and a large area where I and several others pulled off for a break).  But just beyond this point, in several directions, I saw houses where people still lived and a church that still looked functional, so I think this must still be a hub for this general area.  The good thing I can say about dying and dead towns is that I'm relieved to note that Nature reclaims areas we've abandoned.

At that pullout area, I saw a sign saying this was part of the Heartland Expressway - Ports-to-Plains Alliance.  Curious, I looked it up and learned this section is part of a project begun in 1988 and intended to create an international trade corridor from Canada to Mexico.  It runs from Limon, CO, through Nebraska and Wyoming, to Rapid City, SD.  From there it joins the road section that runs through ND to Montana's border with Saskatchewan.  South of Limon, it joins the road section that runs to the border with Mexico at Laredo, TX.  This part of the project has stalled because of funding issues.  That rough road surface I hit may be due to the stall.

As I continued south from Last Chance I discovered I was back in the land of "No Snowplowing 7 PM - 5 AM."  I saw those signs at intervals for the rest of the drive.

I saw another sign saying "Texas - Montana Trail."  This being news to me, I looked it up and learned it was used for driving longhorns from TX to MT from 1866 until 1897, which is actually a good long time for something I've never heard of.  There's an interesting story about the drives and about chuckwagons at this link.   https://www.brushnewstribune.com/TX-MT-cattle-drives

We stopped in Limon (pronounced "LIE mon") at an unused baseball field to stretch our legs and get some lunch.  I saw a crow without tail feathers have trouble getting off the ground and wondered if birds hate spring and fall molting periods or just get used to them as a part of life.  Limon, founded along a railroad track, was named for the local supervisor of the RR crew.  It was incorporated in 1909, but 9 years before that it was the site of a horrific lynching incident.  A 16-year-old Black boy had supposedly confessed to killing an 11-year-old White girl and a group of townspeople, deciding hanging was too good for him, took him from the sheriff and burned him to death.  So, no, lynchings weren't confined to the South.

After Punkin Center (amazing that variations on this name are in so many states), I saw what I thought was a young elk trapped in a field.  I saw it go up to a barbed-wire fence and trot around as if trying to figure out how to get out.  Some miles later I saw another one grazing peacefully in a field and suddenly the name pronghorn antelope popped into my head.  Sure enough, online photos confirmed that's what I saw, not an elk.

I didn't see the bend in the horn, but otherwise
what you see here is what I saw both times.

I don't think I've seen one before, but Colorado is apparently part of their territory.  The US Fish & Wildlife Service says they evolved alongside the cheetah, which may explain their extraordinary speed.  There's some interesting information about them from the National Wildlife Federation at this link.   https://www.nwf.org/Pronghorn

Finally the road came to Ordway, elev. 4,312', which I drove through earlier this month when I was on my way to Pueblo.  Then on to Rocky Ford, where I saw a sign saying "Good Luck Meloneers" which made no sense to me until I looked it up.  The local high school is known as the Meloneers, and you have to see their mascot.

Isn't that a hoot?  Sure enough, I saw a large field of pumpkins near town.

Then on to Swink, elev. 4,118', where Holly Sugar company once had a large factory for processing beet sugar - I saw the buildings with the label "Swink Sugar Factory" still easily visible.

Then on to La Junta, elev. 4,066'.  Not exactly sea level, but still somewhat lower than I have been for weeks now.  The KOA seemed like home in a way, since we were only here 3 weeks ago, but they were doing a lot of construction to install an old railroad caboose as a KOA Kabin, which temporarily changed the traffic flow and the character.  On the other hand, the campground was less than half full, which was a real change from a month ago, and made dog-walking much easier.

I'd intended to watch the presidential debate tonight, since Mountain Time means it'll be on at 7:00 my time.  But then I decided I wouldn't be able to stay awake for the whole thing but would instead go to bed and end up lying there sleepless from being all wound up and might as well have stayed up to watch the rest of it anyway.  So I didn't watch any of it.

Here's the odd thing.  Earlier today on NPR I heard an interview with 3 voters: a strong Democrat, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned Independent, and a fervent Republican.  The latter, an intense Trump supporter, kept interrupting the other 2 to comment, criticize and contradict, and it was hard for the interviewer to keep order.  Not to get ahead of myself, but I understand that's almost exactly what happened during the Trump-Biden debate.  While many may have disapproved of Trump's performance, I feel confident the person I heard on the radio thought he'd done a great job.  And I'm glad I didn't watch it.