560 miles to go!
We pulled out of the Comfort Inn at Lawrence, Kansas at 8:25am CST.
Our gas mileage was pitifully low ... like 8.5 mpg low. Rouse thought something was wrong, but it happens to be a long uphill slog from Kansas to Denver. By the end of the day, we would climb more than 4,000 feet! (Later in the day, with the prairie winds behind us and the climb becoming more a traverse than a climb we saw improvement up to 10.5 mpg... whoo hoo!)
We drove across the great farmlands of America. We pulled over to view the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve. We saw buffaloes, cows, lots of hay baled for cows, sorghum, sunflowers, a sea of soybeans, and corn fields that reached to the horizon. It was a hot, dry wind that blew across the prairie. Fittingly, we saw hundreds of giant windmills lined up across the landscape, arms gracefully swirling in a surprisingly beautiful dance against the blue sky.
Of course, we always have our eyes to the skies. Near the geographic center of the 48 contiguous united states - not far from Abilene, Kansas, birthplace of President Eisenhower - we saw red headed and red bellied woodpeckers, a yellow billed cuckoo, eastern bluebirds... and we heard a Eurasian collared dove. Further down the road, we stretched our legs at yet another rest stop and saw eastern kingbirds, robins, barn swallows, and lots of Mississippi kites. We saw many of these kites along the way. They were fun to watch, swooping and diving to catch insects... quite the aerial acrobatics show!
Once we crossed into Colorado, the landscape changed dramatically to dry, brown vistas dotted with mesquite. We saw pronghorn antelope, and the hazy, smokey evidence of the fires burning further west... one of the biggest fires Colorado has ever seen.
We finally arrived at our destination, St. Vrain's State Park outside of Boulder at 6:30pm MT. Noah met us there, and the three of us went out for supper. We were exhausted and very happy to be safely parked for a fews days as we dropped off to sleep.
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| prairie wildflowers |
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| soybeans |
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| windmills |
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| really oversized load ... a windmill blade |
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| urban camping ... our home away from home while visiting Noah in Boulder |
Wow! You have had quite the journey so far. Glad to see you were able to enjoy some of my old stomping grounds. The Tall Grass Prairie is beautiful. Hope the trip is a bit less eventful from here on out!
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