A State at a Time: Kansas - Day 5 - Garden City & Monument Rocks

Goodland KOA, Goodland
Monday, 5 October 2020

today's route

Dodge City

I didn't want to leave Dodge City without seeing at least something of it. I'd done a little research and learned that admission to the Boot Hill Museum would cost me $14, which I thought excessive. Especially considering that Boot Hill as it was no longer exists. I understand the town blasted away half the hill to create more building land. Given that, I didn't bother to find out what happened to the graves. If the museum charged something like $5, I'd probably have paid it, but the cost didn't seem worth it to me. But there were a few other things I found on Front Street I thought interesting.

a longhorn statue that I
thought was nicely done

top of 3rd long poster

top of left column

bottom of left column -
the real Long Branch Saloon
didn't look like Miss Kitty's

top of right column

bottom of right column

the city claims this is
James Arness as Matt Dillon -
note my skepticism

an 1872 sketch of Dodge City -
the year it was founded -
the following tell the story of its early growth

top of left hand column
about Dodge City

bottom of left column

the saga continues . . .

. . . end of saga

The statue of Matt Dillon and this poster about Dodge City were at the Visitor Center, that I guess was modeled after the design of old railroad stations.

Visitor Center

This railroad station looks more like
a railroad station, though it's surely not very old.

Less than a block from here is the Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame and the Gunfighters Wax Museum. They were both touted on the same sign and from where I sat, it looked like they were both in the same building, but I hope not. Nothing wrong with saving money on rent but those 2 entities together seem a little weird.

Garden City

It took more than an hour for me to drive over here from Dodge City, but it's a drive I did a few days before so don't have anything new to add about the scenery.

In Garden City I started with the Petco; I tried to find a pet supply store in Dodge City, but apparently this is the closest - it's only 50 miles away. From there I went to a grocery store, but the main thing I wanted to see in this town is what they call The Big Pool.

It's a swimming pool that was dug by hand and has been variously described with some combination of these adjectives: world's largest, US's largest, outdoor, free, concrete, municipal. It was opened in 1922 and was indeed dug by hand (not machines) and held 2 million gallons of water. In the 1930s, the WPA added a bathhouse. In the 1980s, 2 young people skied on it for a stunt. Sadly for me, it's no longer there. I guess the city was taking the opportunity brought by the virus closures to rebuild the pool. It had been leaking an appreciable amount of water in the last few years and needed extensive repairs that would cost a lot, making it controversial. Well, I can attest that the new version will absolutely not be hand dug, because I saw quite a few pieces of machinery doing digging operations where the pool obviously had been - "obviously" because the bathhouse is still there.

Oh well. Onward to a natural phenomenon almost due north of Garden City.

On the road

Most towns in this state, no matter what their size, seem to have a batch of grain elevators that are operated by co-ops. I saw Pride Ag Resources in several places, also Garden City Co-op.

Out in the country, I passed a farmhouse and saw 3 chickens standing on the shoulder of the 2 lane road. Not far from there a semi passed me heading in the chickens' direction and I wondered - considering the walloping those semis give me with the air they generate as they pass, what would they do to those chickens?

More and more often I see wind turbine blades being transported. Are they building more, or repairing the ones they've got, or taking them down? Whatever, they tend to block traffic, since wind farms aren't in cities and these rural roads are narrow.

Here in western Kansas, the land is very flat and it's all cropland and grazing land. I see a lot of maize and some kind of low-growing green plant I haven't identified yet. In several places I saw farmers irrigating fields of chopped-down corn plants and figured they must have over-seeded (or under-seeded) the field to reuse it right away. Confirmed by seeing other fields where a low green crop was coming up where short (6") cornstalks were showing among the plants.

I saw oil wells all along the way, some working and some not.

I passed a sign telling me to turn left to go to a Mennonite Church. I understand quite a few of them settled in Kansas, and brought their strain of wheat with them from Russia that saved American farmers (not to mention those of us who eat wheat-containing foods).

I passed signs about El Cuartelejo, which I'd never heard of and now that I've looked it up I'm sorry I missed it. In Lake Scott State Park, near Scott City, there are archaeological remains of the northernmost Native American pueblo, and the only one they've found so far in Kansas.

Monument Rocks

I'd never heard of these before and found out about them because the AAA map labeled "Monument Rocks/Chalk Pyramids." I was curious and I'm really glad I made the trip, though after I'd turned off US 83 I was doubting it. One of the roads Google said I'd find, I didn't find. But another of them had a highway marker for "Monument Rocks →", which put me on 7 or 8 miles of washboard roads and cattle guards that were pretty dadgummed uncomfortable. Dexter kept giving me reproachful looks. But then, in the distance, this is what I saw.

Looks like a city, doesn't it. And I guess that's what it looked like to the folks who traveled this way 150 years ago. When I got there I found some signs that explained what I was looking at.

I didn't know any of that about the inland sea. I wouldn't have thought it was as extensive as the drawing above shows it, just because I haven't heard of it. On the other hand, I haven't yet been to any of the states north of here, where I'm likely to hear more about it. But I'm willing to believe that's where these chalk monuments came from.

And one more sign from the "management":

The monumental rocks are on both sides of the road, but the place where the signs were is where there was a small area for people to park. This is what was on the other side of the road.

the one at far right reminded me of a camel with a howdah

That photo doesn't show how big they are, but maybe you'll be able to see that in the photos I took on the parking side of the road. The dogs and I walked all the way around them, so this is a 360° view.

The fact that my RV is dwarfed by these things should show the dimensions. I was fascinated with them, and a little nervous too because I could see signs of where chunks had broken off or the walls had eroded from the weather. It's just chalk, after all.

It was peaceful there and I almost hated to leave, but it was already mid-afternoon and we still had an hour-and-a-half's drive to tonight's campground.

One last photo of these remains:

You may be thinking this is a very tall mound at a distance. It's not. It's not more than about 5' tall. I took this photo because I figure it's a good illustration of what those Monument Rocks will look like eventually. Just a pile of chalk dust. I'm glad I got to see them. Let's hear it for AAA maps!

Back on the road

I dreaded another 7 miles of that washboard road but didn't have any choice, so off we went. We got back to US 83, thankfully, and I saw quite a few ravines as I drove north, as if there'd been a lot of water around here once.

Also a lot more oil wells. And a lot of Meadowlarks and a lot of cows.

I passed a house that looked like a pile of pick-up sticks and was bizarrely attached to a garage that was completely intact. I wondered if a tornado had come through.

Buffalo Bill Cody

The town of Oakley is 20 miles down the road from the turn-off to Monument Rocks, and I didn't expect to do anything there but make a jog to stay on US 83. Then abruptly I saw a sign pointing left to the Buffalo Bill Cultural Center, and at the same time I saw this statue.

I didn't think I was interested in Buffalo Bill, having the impression he was one of those who overhunted the buffalo into near extinction. But there was a kiosk nearby with a bunch of signs so I stopped to take a look. According to the signs, he did kill a lot of buffalo but he didn't waste them. The signs were printed on a dark green background that made them hard to read. I've done my best to make these photos legible.

part 1 of sign

part 2 of sign

part 3 of sign

These next 2 are about the contest that won Bill his reputation.

And these are about Bill's rifle, "Lucretia Borgia."

text enlarged below

detail from above

These are about the effects of the railroad coming through.

And these are about Annie Oakley, who turns out to be far more interesting and complex than I'd expected.

images of the legend

These next 2 are about the Gold Rush.

part 1 of sign

part 2 of sign

You may remember there was information about the Butterfield Overland Dispatch back at Monument Rocks.

Speaking of Monument Rocks, there are these:

detail enlarged right
and below

detail enlarged

part 1 of more detail

part 2 of more detail

shows a fossil they found

There was also this information about the Indians who lived around here.

Top: Indian warriors with canvas teepees.
Prior to the 1870s, most teepees were made of buffalo hides.
Lower left: Pawnee women and children pose in front of an earthen lodge.
Middle: Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill. Enemies in 1876 - friends in 1885.
Right: Little Wolf, Northern Cheyenne Chief.

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

And finally, here are 3 about the buffalo, which is where this story started.

part 1

part 2

Back on the road

Continuing on US 83, I passed a feed lot with a sign that said, "Eat Beef - Stay Slim." That diet passed me by, I guess. But it seems tactless to post that sign above the heads of the poor cows.

In this area I saw roads named TH B and TH C. I'm guessing there's a background story but can't offhand figure out what it is.

Once on I 70, I passed a very large wind farm and felt a bit like one of those turbine blades because of the very strong crosswinds.

There was a long section of road work with a lot of people on site, and I was surprised to see that every single one of the workers was actually and obviously working. I think that's the first time I've seen that.

I 70 is an east/west road, so the strong northerly wind was hitting us flat on the side. As my brother said, there's nothing to stop it before it gets here, so I'm getting all the wind that's going. Underpasses make for some pretty squirrely wind patterns.

Kansas has an unusual selection of billboards. I saw ads that said: "Control Corn Rootworm Adults Before They Control You" and "Dynagro Seed." Then there was one that said, "Rightwingtomatoes.com - Let's Make Hollywood Suck a Little Less." That turns out to be a website for Christian-themed movies.

Goodland

I'd heard that this town claims the country's largest easel, and the town's small enough - and flat enough - that I found it easily. It's at the local Visitor Center, which also has a large dog park, so we took a little break here.

You can see from the surroundings
that it really is pretty big. That's a
Van Gogh copy on display.

some detail about the easel and painting

We also went to a place for propane, because it's been getting chilly at night and I was down to a quarter tank and had been having trouble finding propane elsewhere. This was one of the fairly few places that requires all living beings to be out of the vehicle before they fill it up (Lily hates these situations because I have to dump her and her carrying case on the ground while I hang on to the dogs), so as long as the dogs were out, I took them for another short walk.

The wind suddenly blew up an even stronger gust than before and I got a dumptruck-ful of dirt in my eyes. With contacts, I'm limited about what I can do to fix the problem and had to keep walking along with the dogs while not being able to see out of either eye for a bit - but I couldn't just stop because I had to get back to the RV to clean my eyes out. After spending time in rainless Oklahoma, followed by rainless Colorado, I'm getting a little tired of rainless Kansas. On the other hand, I know Kansas has had some severe flooding incidents, one just this past July, so I'm trying to be careful of what I wish for. A little sprinkle now and then would be a nice change.

And then on to the campground, where we'll stay for 2 nights.

A State at a Time

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Kansas - Day 5 - Garden City & Monument Rocks

No comments:

Post a Comment