Thursday, 1 through Sunday, 4 October 2020
My research before I left on this trip told me Dodge City is one of the US's windiest cities. I now have no trouble believing it, though I'm still nominating Oklahoma as being the windiest state in the US. It blew all month in Oklahoma, and it blew almost the whole time I was in Dodge City. It helped keep the temperature down, though I didn't much like it blowing the RV around and kept me from putting out the awning, which I'd wanted for the shade.
Dennis Hopper was born here, incidentally.
We had a full moon the whole time I was here, and one morning when we went out for our early walk, it was truly orange. Seemed almost apocalyptic, though I'm sure it was some atmospheric thing causing it.
Most KOAs have a fenced dog park, as does this one, but here it's at least half an acre and is owned by the city. It has a gate at each end, and every time I took the dogs over there, someone else was letting his dogs in at the other end. Well, I know my dogs pretty well by now, and I have no trouble at all assuming that, despite the enormous amount of space, mine would go charging the length of the field to check out the other dog, who would undoubtedly be upset about the charge of the light brigade and get defensive, which would make mine get riled up, which would lead to trouble. In other words, despite this huge space, my dogs never set foot inside. I do wish they weren't quite like the way they are.
Next to the campground is something the city calls a zoo. I know for sure they have a buffalo or two because Dexter and I saw them. It's next to a park with a water park (fortunately closed now) and a playground where parents often took their kids. Little kids are another of Gracie's PTSD triggers - even just the sight of them from a block away will do it.
Speaking of little kids, the campground was also right next to 3 soccer fields, and in the evenings the local teams held practice sessions. My campsite was right next to those and it was sometimes hard to find a place to walk the dogs in the evening.
My campsite also had a railroad track immediately behind it. By "immediately," I mean about 30' away. Fortunately, the trains didn't run at night, but I could sure hear them when they were there.
On the other side of the soccer fields was an ethanol plant that seemed to operate at all hours, because I heard it at 2:00 AM.
Somewhere on the other side of the campground, beyond the fairgrounds, was the city animal shelter. When we were out early in the morning, we could easily hear the dogs howling. It upset my dogs who, after all, could understand what they were saying. Which I suppose was, where's my family, I want to go home. It sounded like every dog in the shelter joined the chorus, as did some others from other directions.
So, I know it sounds like a busy place, and it felt like it every time we left the RV.
This KOA had a banner up saying "I'm A New KOA." I think it was just built a year or two ago and is very well designed. Except for the showers, which were designed about 30 years ago. The stall had no lip on it but the floor instead was level with the outer floor. It had no temperature or volume controls - just a button to push on, for a water flow of 1 minute. Then push again for another minute. The sprayer was aimed a couple of inches past the drain in the floor, and the floor was sloped so the water had to run out of the stall. All of it. By the time I finished my shorter-than-I'd-planned shower, the water was nearly an inch deep at the other end and out into the bathroom but nearly dry under the shower head. I guess I should be grateful there weren't any bugs in there, but it definitely had not been cleaned in a while: there were wads of long dark hair on the floor and plastered against the wall and dried soap in the soap dish. Just yucky all the way around. This is one time I'm going to comment when they automatically send me a comment request.
On the other hand, I only used the shower once. And the KOA offered free copies of the local paper every day, which I appreciated, being a hard-copy daily newspaper kind of person.
Besides dogs and some birds, I didn't see one critter the whole time we stayed there. No rabbits or foxes or even squirrels. Seemed odd.
Still they had a decent wifi signal, so I got some work done. One plus is that I had a great session with my friend Janice Friesen, who taught me how to do this blog in the first place. She gave up a good chunk of her Friday morning to try to help me resolve some of these technical issues I've been having with the new interface and was very supportive, which is a lot of what I needed. She has a program that can sync her computer with mine, so I could show her - even 2 states away - what happened when I did this or that on the blog and tried to help me find answers. I can highly recommend her to anyone with issues like mine. Her website is at https://imnotageek.com. As you may have been able to tell, she couldn't resolve them all because she's not a coder - or a geek - but she did help convey a sort of zen-like tolerance for the stupidity of those who perpetrated the problems on this platform, which my frustration level sorely needed.
In all, I didn't see anything of Dodge City but I did get some good rest, which I needed.
And I saw this nice sunset. (I couldn't decide which photo I liked best.)
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