The Beginning and the End

Anyone who thinks Kansas is just a the state in the middle of the United States has NOT been to Kansas.  
 Travelers on the Santa Fe Trail left  Kansas City, Mo and headed west and southward through Kansas towards Santa Fe and then on to further destinations west, stopping at Fort Larned - a fort built primarily to protect travelers and provide respite from Indian attacks on the trail - much like Bent's Fort in La Junta, CO.  - and Dodge City as well.  

Kansas also prides itself on being the place that was beginning of the end of slavery.  It had 4 constitutions before one was finally accepted.  All because of the issue of slavery.  Originally the state was supposed to enter the union as a slave state, due to the Missouri Compromise, but then there came the Kansas Nebraska Act which said it's residents could choose. All hell broke loose. Rich abolitionists sponsored immigrants to Kansas to stack the deck in favor of the abolitionist movement,  John Brown and his militia were among them.  Then there were the Bushwhackers who came over from Missouri  to try to swing the state towards slavery.  Jesse James and his family were pro-slavery, owned slaves and fought with Quantrill's Raiders during the war. When all was said and done, 4 constitutions later, Kansas entered the Union as a free state but many of it's courthouses and communities were burned by opposing forces in the process.  Jesse James later became a bank robber - supposedly because he was so bitter about the aftermath of the war.  True Missouri did pass rather punitive laws against Missourians who had fought for the South, but perhaps he had learned to enjoy violence in his association with Quantrill's raiders at such an early age and just couldn't give up the thrill it gave him.

Forgetting the Bleeding Kansas History, Kansas is also lovely in the spring. It has miles and miles of green fields and cities and towns with broad leafed trees shading the traditional houses in them.  I never met a grumpy person, Kansians always seemed more than eager to help you find just what you wanted.  From the womand at the LeCompton Constitutional Hall (the Lecompton constitution was the second of the four Kansas passed before finally coming up with one that passed both the house and senate of the U.S.)  who was determined we would get everything we could from her town's historical sights and even it's best burger joint, to the host at the First Presbyterian Church in Topeka who made sure the lights were NOT turned off on us while we viewed the beautiful stained glass windows and assured the guard that our parking in the church lot was ok while we wandered across to the state capitol. 

Eisenhower is from Kansas, his parents attended University in LeCompton, Bob Dole is from Kansas, the Cathedral on the Plains is in Kansas... there's a lot to Kansas.  Take your time and you'll find yourself immersed in history and a friendly middle America that's hard to beat.

Boot Hill, Dodge City

graffiti at Fort Larned

path of the Santa Fe Trail skirting Ft. Larned

Tiffany Window at First Presbyterian Church, Topeka

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Capital Building, Topeka

The Modern Day Prairie Schooner - or Sailboat of the Plains

Sailing Across the Plains... Following the Santa Fe Trail

First of all.... don't expect to hear from us daily.  I'd spend far too much time writing and not enough time seeing all of this wonderful country I want to see. 

That being said, our first "real" day out went off without any further breakdowns.  We are still on the up side of the learning curve, though when it comes to trailer travel.  Larry went out for a bike ride this morning while I contemplated where we'd stop for the night, and, after altering our route a bit because I had discovered if we took US 56 out of Dodge City we could take in Ft. Larned National Historic Site, booked us into Topeka, Kansas.  Now I should admonish any friends who expect us to stay on tack and stay on schedule.  We have never been masters of that particular art because we always seem to find something to distract us just a few miles off course and that takes half a day to see the way it should be seen. Or worse, sends us off on a new tack, like a sailboat on the plains.

By the time we took off from the Lamar campground it was after 10 and we found that traveling with a trailer slows you down.  First it's just more comfortable for our truck to travel at 60-65 and secondly it is way more fuel efficient. With a truck that gets 9-12 mpg with a trailer in tow, that's important! So we found ourselves driving into Dodge City after 2 pm.  Not good if we wanted to see Boot Hill (2 hrs or so) then drive on up to Ft. Larned National Historic Site which closes at 4:30.

So far RV Park people are wonderful!  The Dodge City  Gunsmoke RV Park people graciously took us in a day late and the Topeka RV Park people agreed to postpone our arrival a day without a penalty.  I plead newbie and dumb, I'll admit, but to some degree I am both.  I will be much less ambitious on our next leg of the journey... which should be Wichita.  Unless I find someplace else to set a tack for.

Oh and by the way, we found some sealant that worked to stop our water leak so we are back in operation ....  showers tonight, hooray!

all better!

All Journeys Begin With One Small Step

Unfortunately, our "One Small Step" feels like it was off the top rung of a ladder.  

We left the house for our first the of the 6 week journey we have planned to the Shenendoah Valley going the sort of southern route through Arkansas and Tennessee then back through Ohio and Missouri.

Larry had his last Rooster Comb Shots at 9:45 so we cranked up and left the house at 9:15.  We got to the doctors office on time and realized Larry had left his wallet on the counter at home.  No problem, a 30 minute delay while we ran back for it then headed back down I-25 south for gas at Costco and a key replacement for the truck bed.

When we parked at the locksmiths we discovered the front left tire of Serendipity was shredded.  Must have happened somewhere on Nevada Street as the tire was fine when we left Costco. So while Larry dealt with the key issue, I called Good Sam who said no, we didn't have trailer service, just car roadside service.  After a 15 minute discussion, the problem was resolved and we waited an hour for the service vehicle to get there and replace the tire.  Next we called Camping World who sells trailers, but apparently not tires for trailers so we started calling tire stores and found a Discount Tire close by who could replace our spare.  

Consoling ourselves with Root Beer Freezes from the nearby fast food place while waiting for the spare tire to be remounted, we realized we needed to cancel our reservation in Dodge City because it was after 3 pm - remember we left the house at 9:15 - and we had not left Colorado Springs.  Thankfully the Good Sam campground in Lamar, Colorado had spaces and set one aside for us.

We pulled into our campground at Lamar and set about connecting Serendipity to power and water.  Entering the trailer, we found our bottle of Hornitas tequila had leapt out of the cabinet and broken in half and our bed was soaked.  I cleaned up that mess and in the process noticed water pooling on the floor. Turns out both water connections were leaking at the input bibs.  We have 2/3 a tank of water so we're going on that for the night and looking for some foam to seal the leak tomorrow.

Now we're drinking beer with the air conditioning on and wondering if we should just head home or assume that we've hit all the bumps in the road on the first day.

Exploring Southeast Colorado and Taos

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Prelude to the "Real Thing"

This is our first real trip out with Serendipity and we were doing a trial run to see what we needed to jettison from our supplies, what we needed to add to our equipment and supplies and what 5 days in a 22 foot trailer would be like.... before we took off for six weeks to the Shenendoah Valley and back through the northern mid east home.

Monday, May 5, 2014 The Road to the Great Sand Dunes    

 For us we were off to an early start, or would have been had we not had some significant issues to deal with.  Perhaps the pair that posed the most difficult issues was the fact Serendipity had slipped off her moorings and was almost too low to get the ball under it, the other one was attaching the torsion bars.  The first issue just took a half dozen runs getting the right angle to slide under the hitch.  The torsion bars were a more difficult problem; it required shifting to each side of the road for a change in the truck’s angle, it also required a loosening of the top bolt on the hitch to change its angle as well.  Difficult as these issues were, we still were on I-25 by 9:30 and headed south.

A plum of black smoke rose ahead of us roughly where the Drake Power Plant was; it turned out to be in fact the plant.   We later learned that lubricating oil had been ignited; there wasn’t an assessment of how much damage had been done, what it would cost to repair, or how long the plant might be out of service.   Whatever the impact, we had had our excitement for the morning.

We continued south to Walsenburg stopping to once again take pictures of the rural mailboxes.  Apparently such interest stirred up one of the residents; he gave us a look that would kill as his significant other picked up the mail, but said nothing.  With little else to talk about, we began to discuss the Ludlow Massacre that occurred on April 20, 1914 at the encampment of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I) strikers and the skirmishes at dozens of mines that claimed somewhere between 69 and 199 lives over the next 10 days that included a series of clashes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40 mile front between Trinidad and Walsenburg.  It remains the deadliest strike in American history.  One of these days we will have to make Walsenburg and Trinidad our destination for a weekend in pursuit of this little known piece of history.

 It was early afternoon when we made the turn off to the Great Sand Dunes, which we could see in the distance at the base of the still snow-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains some 20 plus miles away. 

With no prior experience in this area, our first priority was a place to camp; we had our choices at Piñon Flats – roadside sites or back in.  Perhaps ill-advised, we chose what seemed to simpler site – roadside.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  First we got the trailer too close to the downslope tent camp area and had to stumble out the door onto a low rock wall rather than flat asphalt.  Next we had a battle with Serendipity who was misbehaving, she refused to settle nicely on our blocks – she rolled off twice and refused to level ever.  We gave up with an approximation of level. Getting inside Serendipity we discovered the potatoes and onions had burst their cage and ran amok. We are finding them in the strangest places . . . it's like an Easter egg hunt.