Rocky Mountain High -- Colorado

Well, no Rocky Mountains yet, just the eternal prairie. Actually we can't even SEE the foothills of those towering peaks here in space 10 of the Limon, Colorado, KOA. Everything in every direction is as flat as the proverbial pancake. They do have a nice breeze blowing, thankfully, since it's been hot-hot-hot today as we drove across the final miles of Kansas and eased into John Denver's old stomping grounds. Speaking of Mr. Denver, did you know that his real name was John Deutschendorf, Jr? Still, Denver or Deutschendorf, Concetta and I were doing a lot of humming of Denver tunes as we rolled up highway 40 this afternoon. We hadn't counted on making it all the way to Limon, but the fates were with us today. Not only did everything go pretty smoothly, but we benefited from the time zone change which gained us an hour at the Colorado/Kansas border.

You've probably noticed, at least the three of you who are regularly reading this treatise, that entries have been a bit sparse since we entered the state of Kansas. Since there are no KOAs on Route 36, we were totally dependent on the mobile device. But I suspect that Virgin Mobile has no cell towers or whatever makes my mobile device work, since all the way across we had no connectivity. I guess it's possible that Homer Simpson is running the Virgin Mobile operation and he just fell asleep, but no firm evidence as yet. I haven't tried the mobile device now that we're in Colorado, so the jury is still out on whether Homer's influence will extend beyond Kansas.

So, what did you miss? Well, you missed the intrepid travelers visiting the fabled geographic center of the United States. That's right, there's patch of grass full of picnic tables, park benches and an American flag atop a stone monument that occupies that one-and-only point in the United States of America which, were you to have something to balance a uniformly sliced piece of the U.S. upon, would be the balance point. The point was established in, if I remember correctly, 1940. At that time they optimistically built a motel right on the edge of the little balance point park thinking, as most of us would no doubt, that multitudes of folks would be beating a path to see this balancing act in progress.

I guess, if you believe the literature, the site was never as popular as the world's biggest ball of string, or the baby rattlers as so often advertised on roadside attraction signs back then. Consequently, the motel folded and the Geographic Center park rests serenely in the shade most days as cars rush by unabated on Highway 36, their occupants completely oblivious to what they're missing. Should you want to go, you'll have to travel route 36 and look for signs for the town of Lebanon. Take your lunch and spend a quiet hour. It's a nice place for listening to the sounds of silence. I think the crunching of my lunchtime Sun Chips was the loudest sound I heard there.

Last night we slept in Prairie Dog Town, a wonderfully kept state park near Norton, Kansas. Concetta found it in the camp book and it sounded like just our sort of place. As much as we liked our camping arrangement in the Marysville city park, we discovered once we'd gone to bed that the night was filled with train sounds. Near ceaseless train whistles and the clickity-clack of train wheels went on, literally, all night long. The next morning, when it was time to leave, we discovered that just a block or so away from the park -- you won't believe this -- were NINE railroad tracks arching through the city. I assume that the tracks were not all main lines but a staging area for building trains. Oh, well, win some, lose some.

So Prairie Dog Town turned out to be perfect for a short-term or long-term camper. Everything was kept very clean and orderly and, except for a few muted voices at one point, I didn't hear another thing the whole time we were there. We had a nice site in the trees, easy to access with the RV, and we even had an opportunity to sit outside and have a pre-dinner cocktail before the bugs found us and told their friends. The park didn't have a sewer connection for each camp site, but the general-use dump station near the entrance was very easy to use. In just a few minutes we had dumped the tanks and were on our way.

But the question was, which way to go. If we continued on Route 36 that headed right across Kansas and Colorado all the way to Denver, we didn't see any camp sites listed, public or private. So, we decided to head south on route 383 from Norton, then catch Route 40 toward, well, Denver as well, but on Route 40 we could stop at the KOA in Limon. The route we chose was somewhat circuitous, granted, but we were hoping to avoid any contact with Interstate 70 and maybe discover an out-of-the-way gem of some sort.

And we did. The best point of interest we stumbled over today was the town of Wallace. In the 1800s Wallace was a vitally important point on the overland stage route as well as being located near Fort Wallace which figured prominently in the Indian wars of the 1860s. Even General Custer had occasion to spend time in the Fort Wallace area in the mid 1860s. As fate would have it, Concetta and I decided to spend some time in the Fort Wallace area, too, as we reached it just about lunchtime. Granted, I didn't expect much from the town's little isolated museum, located, as it is, out in the middle of the Kansas prairie, but boy was I wrong. The museum was just top notch. Everything was skillfully and carefully done throughout. They had everything from a prairie schooner to their own railroad station, from a myriad of tools from every frontier craft, to women's and men's fashions from 140 years ago.

But the wing of the museum that I liked the very best was devoted to one man's collection of "dug" artifacts from the various military forts, camps, stage stations, and battle sites throughout the area. This chap had retired and taken up the hobby of metal detecting. Before he finally donated the collection to the Wallace Museum, he had collected thousands and thousands of artifacts which he carefully researched, cataloged, and displayed in framed site-oriented collections. (Note: there were at least thirty of the framed presentations - see photo for one).

I was so taken with this collection, I tried photographing it all. I was totally dismayed to find out that no one had made a photographic record of the collection, complete with the collector's notations, which would help future historians identify other found artifacts. I did find one item at the museum that I hadn't expected to find: a book on the archaeology of the Sand Creek Massacre. The subject of Sand Creek is close to me because my great grandmother's brother was a participant. Probably none of you are familiar with the topic, but the Sand Creek massacre will go down in infamy as one of the country's most unnecessary tragedies. The story, in short, concerned Chief Black Kettle's village of largely friendly Cheyenne's that was attacked by the Colorado 100-days Calvary in 1864. Over 150 Indians, mostly women and children, were cut down, though they posed no threat to the surrounding population and, indeed, were flying the American flag over the Chief's teepee. Very, very sad.