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We left the Kauffman's about 9:30 and headed west towards Dodge City. Ann used to listen to Gunsmoke on the radio with her father and she wanted to see this wild west town. Dodge City is a crossroads where several trails and the railroads come together. It is still a big stockyard for cattle. The town was pretty disappointing. They didn't have anything - save for a museum that wanted money to see Boot Hill - that celebrated their wild west heritage. They didn't even have a good wild west saloon to grab lunch. I wanted to see Boot Hill but I found out that nobody famous (or infamous) was buried there. So we looked through the museum's giftshop and then left town.
Kansas may be the windiest place in the world. Sheesh! Now I know why Dorothy went to Oz - she wanted to get away from Kansas. The sustained northward winds were probably 40-50 mph. As we drove west, we would have to steer left to keep our vehicle on the straight road. Then, when we reached a grain elevator (and there are LOTS of grain elevators in Kansas), the wind would stop and our vehicle would veer left into the other lane. Just as we would correct the steering we would be past the grain elevator and the wind would hit again, throwing us off the right side of the road. We learned to drive slowly past the grain elevators.
We drove Rt. 50 all the way from the Kauffman's home to Pueblo, Colorado. Eastern Colorado, although mostly flat, is much more interesting than Kansas. It has more texture to the landscape. About 60 miles outside of Pueblo the land started to climb. We were still on the plains but as we climbed each hill we would see a new hill on the horizon. We reached Pueblo about 6:00 p.m. Mountain Time (we gained another hour) and then turned north toward Denver.
Interstate 25 from Pueblo to Denver is nice. Most of it is 75 mph and it follows the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was storming in Pueblo and Colorado Springs so it was dark and we couldn't see much.
We called Motel 6 and made a reservation in North Denver for a non-smoking room with a king size bed. When we arrived at the hotel they had no phone service and no king size beds. Okay, I've learned my lesson - no more Motel 6's for the rest of this trip. We left there and drove back to a Super 8 we had seen along the highway. They had a nice room for the same price WITH dataport access for my laptop. I called the Motel 6 reservations line to get my money back for the guaranteed reservation and they told me I had to call Customer Relations in the morning. Grrrr.
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