Thursday, June 25

We headed for Dodge City, Kansas this morning. We started at the visitor's center and decided to go to the Boot Hill Museum which is a 1870s street front with lots of history about Dodge City. There is a huge US map in the visitor's center and people put stickpins in the cities that they're from. No one had put a pin in Frederick yet, so Brooke was very excited to do that.

We entered the museum in the hotel entrance which was also a gift store. Then we walked through all of the different stores. We had a sarsaparilla drink from the saloon while listening to pianist, we watched a shoot-out in the front grassy ares where the girls are standing in the picture. Then we decided to dress up in costume and have our picture taken.  The real period style picture may be our Christmas card this year! Of course the girls chose the saloon style!

At the visitor's center, I asked the workers about a local restaurant that would give the feeling of Dodge City, and they told us to go to Casey's, which was a local steakhouse. The local steaks were good, and the owner, Mike, even sat with us for the first half of our meal. Then before we left, he took us into his office and showed us local places to visit and even showed us where they were on the map. He told us how Dodge City is growing and adding casinos, and how half of the town was for it, and half of the town was against it, and how he was involved. It was nice to really talk to a local person. Everywhere we have gone, the people have been very nice.

Then we headed to Colorado. It's been really interesting driving through the prairie and the plains. Jerry's big quote for the day was, "People who say the world is crowded have never been out here!" It cracked me up.

As we were driving Jerry and I would see big white grain elevators and we would guess how far off they where. For the first one, Jerry guessed 6 miles and I guessed 3 miles. It was actually 12 miles away! We got a little better as we went, but it is amazing how far you can see.

We have also seen a lot of windmills. 

Brooke gets a little scared sometimes as we are driving, because you can see where it is raining miles away. She also is missing Duncan. I think part of it is that we are all going to sleep and waking at the same time. So today we stopped at Walmart and got Brooke an eye mask that will block out the light in hopes that she will fall asleep even if we are still reading with the lights on. 

We stopped and got gas today at a little place called, Kinsley, KS. Their claim to fame is that they are midway, USA. So it was neat to think that we were in the middle of the U.S.

Today we traveled 292 miles. We have travelled a total of 1832 miles in 6 days. Now that we are in Colorado, I think that we will be able to not travel so much each day, since there are so many neat things to see. The girls have traveled well, we have seen some neat thing, and we have met some nice people.