Missouri 2010

Over the Rainbow

Summer was approaching with its usual promise of hot dusty days here on The Yellow Brick Road and my plans included nothing more than routine trips to the gym hyphenated by the habitual reading sessions at one of a half dozen Starbuck’s patios within five minutes of 24hour Fitness.  North San Diego County, inland, suffers a sort of malaise during the dog days, as they are nestled between the drizzle filled months of spring, which start about Valentine’s Day, and the anxiety filled weeks of autumn and their ever present threat of fire-storms.  While other parts of the country are experiencing monsoon season, our precipitation is limited to what can be wrung out of the sky as dew in the never ending battle between one-hundred-degree desert days and sixty- degree marine influenced nights.  Workouts are scheduled early enough in the morning to ensure return to home coinciding with the Fox News Channel afternoon lineup.  Nothing soothes faster than the dulcet tones of Glenn Beck exposing the latest nefarious communist plot.   Just knowing Glen is watching out for my freedom is enough to tip the balance in favor of peaceful napping over wakeful diligence.  Retired life would be intolerable without him.

Although I had not anticipated it, a call from my Aunt Barbara, my mother’s youngest sister, would alter the annual routine and shift my life out of neutral.  It seems that cousin Georgine, my mother’s brother George’s eldest daughter (you might want to start making notes, because there are a lot of cousins to be referenced in the coming pages of this narrative… Uncle George and Aunt Mary, literal in their interpretation of scripture, were fruitful and multiplied… ten times), having not learned the lesson of her first marriage, was about to take another crack at connubial bliss by entering into matrimonial contract in July, in Kansas.  The where was not a surprise, as Georgine and her nine siblings were all born and raised in Kansas.  The timing was a bit confusing as there is really no reason to be in Kansas in July other than to watch the wheat ripen in the sweltering heat and save up energy for the coming harvest.  The best time to be in Kansas is, well, April 16.  The taxes have been paid and the weather is tolerable.  After that, everybody gets busy doing spring planting and from thirty thousand feet Kansas could be mistaken for an ant colony… no grasshoppers allowed (if this reference confuses you, see Aesop… if not, you are my kind of audience).

Aunt Barbara, who lives in Montrose, Colorado, invited me to fly to Denver and accompany her to the big celebration.  Thinking fast in hopes of avoiding the middle of the country in July, I invoked the, “I don’t fly!” excuse.  It is not a ruse, I don’t fly.  I don’t mind the plane part.  In fact, I like the plane part.  But the airport, luggage, security, seating, food part just insults my tender sensibilities, so I don’t fly.  Have you ever wondered why NASA puts the astronauts in the spaceship hours before the scheduled launch time?  I am guessing it is the same reason one must get to the airport three miserable, line-standing hours before one’s flight, which may or may not take off within five hours of the advertised scheduled departure time.  And furthermore, in a country obviously gone to seed with obesity, why are the coach class seats designed for the hips of Ethiopian distance runners?  I think this is something that warrants a black-board diagram by Glenn Beck.  But I digress.

In my sly fashion, I suggest a road trip.  I will drive to Montrose, Colorado, pick up Aunt Barbara and drive to Kansas.  It seems a veritable Gordian’s Knot.  Who, in their right mind, would want to drive across three-quarters of Colorado and most of Kansas in July?  Certainly not a sensible woman of sixty-nine years.  As nimble and youthful as Aunt Barbara is, one-thousand miles of interstate travel would be daunting to anyone.  To my surprise, she drew the sword of Alexander and called my bluff.  The trip was on.  We were go for a July 7 liftoff.

The Oatmeal Thickens 

Frank and I have been friends for over thirty years.  Sometime in the nineteen eighties, we started taking road trips together.  These are not your typical spring break, drunken orgy, punch holes in the walls of the hotel road trips.  They might have been had we thought on it a little longer.  But, we didn’t.  One of the pillars of our friendship is a common interest in history.  And that is really how this custom got started.  I wanted to see the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento and Frank’s wife, Michele, thought it was a good way to get him out from under foot for a few days.  I did not have a wife at the time which explains why I invited Frank to go.  I just didn’t know any women who would be all atwitter over a trip to see a bunch of greasy locomotives… none that would admit it, anyway.

That trip started a tradition.  Now that we are retired, we try to get a trip to somewhere under our belts every couple of years. The radius of these odysseys has grown significantly as we need stretch our limits to find unseen locales of historical significance. In 2008, our last trip, we fought blizzard and road hypnosis to get to Cody, Wyoming to see the William F. Cody Western Museums.  It was worth the wear and tear.  If you are new to this literary offering, and are interested in my narratives on earlier sorties, let me know and I will send you copies of what I can.

Frank has defined our tradition as a four pronged attack to find; western historical sites, local gun shops, air museums and Mexican food.  I have learned that the farther one travels from San Diego, the more difficult it is to satisfy that last criterion.  None the less, we are not daunted by difficulty; it only serves to make the odd Middle-American occurrence all the more noteworthy.

So, it stands to reason, that when I shared my summer plans with Frank, he expressed an interest in joining what was primarily a family trek for the epicurean adventure and the chance of an unexpected historical gem.  When he told his wife of my plans and the possibility of tagging along, she called and begged me take him with me.  She even offered to compensate me for my trouble.  How could I refuse?  Now the table was set for adventure.  Me and Frank were going to descend on Kansas with a vengeance… look out John Brown!

Best Laid Plans

So it seemed that the journey was well defined.   We three intrepid road warriors would join forces in Montrose, Colorado and proceed to my cousin Mary’s home in Lawrence, Kansas; a suburb of Kansas City and home to the University of Kansas… domain of the Jayhawks (whatever they are) and national basketball power. 

Are you keeping score here?  Mary is another of Uncle George’s progeny.  This is the legacy of the Frank family.  There are lots of ‘em.  I even had an Uncle Francis, known as Frank Frank.  Now don’t be confused, Frank is my mother’s maiden name and is in no way connected to my erstwhile traveling companion, Frank, whose family name is Hinkle.  Although, his family nickname is “Chip”, which connection is troubling on its own. Now if your thoughts did not immediately wander to animated rodents, this tale is not for you and you should stop reading… you will not be able to keep up.

It is also famous as a pre-Civil War, anti-slavery center sacked in May of 1856 by pro-slavery Missourians and again in August of 1863 by Quantrill’s Raiders.  Those Lawrence people just couldn’t catch a break.  I was looking forward to the opportunity to ferret out a little history during our brief stay there. 

But alas, as all road trippers know, when your plans are built around family events, one thing is constant… misinformation.  A week or so before departure, I learned that the final destination would be Clinton, Missouri where the wedding would take place.  In my naivety, I assumed Clinton would be a bedroom community for Kansas City.  It wasn’t.  And try as I might, I could never uncover the real reason for the situs of these nuptials.  I could not, no effort spared, find anything historically interesting about Clinton, Missouri; but more about this metropolis later.

So now we had our final, actionable destination.  The plan was for me and Frank to leave San Diego on the morning of July fifth, and spend the first night in St. George, Utah (no relation).  Day two would take us into Montrose for a night at Aunt Barbara’s and with the team complete, Wednesday would see us Missouri bound. 

Getting Lost In a Quarter Mile

I have made the drive from home to St. George at least half-a-dozen times.  It is a no brainer as you simply proceed north from San Diego on I-15 until you get to, well, St. George.  And if it weren’t for food, fuel and bathroom breaks, it would be an easy six-hour drive.  I am so blasé about the trip that I don’t even notice that I am driving through Sin City until the de rigueur traffic congestion forces me to slow the seventy mile-per-hour clip to a crawl of fifty or so.  If you have never been to Las Vegas but desire to go, schedule your arrival after dark.  At night, the lights are hypnotically attractive.  In the hot, bright light of day, the city loses all visual appeal.  Let the illusion last for at least one night and sleep in as long as you can the next day.

Diligent pre-tip research prompted us to add the Southern Utah Air Museum to our itinerary.  It is located in Washington, Utah which can best be described as a suburb of St. George.  That is if a city of 64,000 can have a suburb.  We found Don Pedro’s Restaurant (also in Washington) to be a reasonable example of a Mexican eatery.  I say reasonable because San Diego is home to the best authentic Mexican food in the county.  Now it is true that different U.S. states’ fare is influenced by the cuisines of different Mexican states, and while that provides for some great measure of variety in what one can expect to appear on the menu, the Baja California influenced offerings in the independent, authentic cocinas of San Diego set a standard that is hard to meet.  At least the hot sauce was to Frank’s liking.  After dinner, we ventured down the road a bit where my Garmin mapping software indicated the air museum to be. We found trailer parks, VFW halls and vacant lots, but a half-hour of driving up and down the same quarter-mile seemed to suggest Garmin was wrong.  Finally, after we had given up the search and turned our disappointed faces west for the drive back to the hotel, at forty miles per hour, I spotted an abandoned looking, sub-road grade, metal building with a faded sign that looked like an air museum logo.  I cranked the wheel to the right, stomped on the brakes, put the twenty-three foot long GMC Sierra into a sideways slide that slowed us enough to make the turn into the driveway.  Now I have owned sports cars, muscle cars, SUVs and even a Honda Accord, but there are few things you can do in a car (and believe me, I have experienced all of them) that can make your butt pucker the old leather seating surfaces like sliding down the boulevard sideways in 7,000 lb. truck.  The museum looked abandoned because it was. 

The next morning, we left St. George still north-bound on I-15 until we turned eastward in I-70 at the junction near Cove Fort.  I had visited the fort on a previous trip to Park City, Utah.  Refer to my travelogue on that trip for a description.  If you are ever traveling by way of I-15 at I-70, it is worth a look.  Intersate-70 proceeds east through Utah and into Colorado just west of Grand Junction crossing some of the most scenic desert country accessible by major highway in the west, known as the San Rafael Swell.  I included a description and pictures in my travelogue of 2007.  From Grand Junction, Colorado, it is a short hop on US-50 to Montrose.

Keep Alert for Falling Houses

The next morning found us flying along US-50 toward Pueblo, Colorado.  And when I say flying, I’m referring to the elevation gain required to cross The Monarch Pass which is right there at 11,000 feet.  As this would be my fourth trip over the pass, I will forego the dramatic description it deserves.  Let it be said, it is a breath taking drive.  We stopped for lunch at Culver’s in Falcon, Colorado which, I guess, is a suburb of Colorado Springs.  We don’t have Culver’s out here on the California frontier, but I wish we did. They make a pretty good hamburger and serve frozen custard.  Now I have experienced frozen custard only once before.  Let’s see, that was way back in St. George, two days prior.  After the disappointment of finding the Southern Utah Air Museum abandoned, the only way to console Frank was to get him some ice cream.  Not finding any ice cream vendors, we settled for a hometown frozen custard shop whose name I did not record (sorry).  Business was booming!  I guess when the general tenants of one’s religion forbid the consumption of alcohol, one consumes frozen treats.  The novelty is something very like soft-serve ice cream but I would speculate from its name the ingredient list is a bit heavy on hen fruit.  It will serve as an adequate substitute for ice cream, on a temporary basis.  Don’t discard of your Baskin Robbins frequent flyer card!  We did not indulge in the frozen custard offered by Culver’s because Aunt Barbara was full from the mondo pork loin sandwich she had ordered.  This inculcated a fondness for pork loin sandwiches which would prove to be her downfall on the return leg of the trip.

The reader may wonder, at this time, why is he spending so many words on an uneventful lunch, including a flashback to St. George dessert.  Those of you who have read my work before have already guessed that there is a punch line coming.  Here it is; the rest of the day was spent on the Western Kansas plains en route the sprawling metropolis of Hays, and there is nothing else to add about the day’s journey.

That night, we met with some relatives from my maternal grandmother’s family whose names I do not remember.  But they were pleasant people and did not flinch when Frank inserted his usually humorous but often dangerously earthy quips into the conversation.  One of the reasons I hang out with Frank is that I am naturally a social disaster.  Frank makes me look better, almost acceptable in polite company.   But I digress.  If I have this correct, our Hays hosts were sisters, daughters to my grandmother’s sister.  That would make them my “x” cousins, “nth” removed.  I never have been able to figure out those strands of familial connectivity and I believe anyone who asserts they can is lying through their teeth.  What is important is that they were very nice people. One of the sisters is a Sister.  I did not pick up what order she is with but she did have some very interesting stories about her missionary work in Siberia. Talk about dedicating your life to your faith! Her narrative notwithstanding, the most interesting note of the evening was that the waitress liked me best… I got two (count ‘em), two baked yams with my steak.  And she went to great lengths to point it out.  Frank sulked.

It turns out that Hays played a very important role in the history of Kansas and the opening of the west after the War Between the States.  It was, for some time, the terminus of the railroad. Hays was the Wild West and some of the more illustrious figures of that period of history wandered through her streets spilling blood as they went.  The location at the end of the tracks also made it an ideal location for a substantial army supply depot serving the outlying frontier forts.  Today, the remnants of the post are still standing at the south edge of the town just along side of Fort Hays State University or North Central Kansas Tech (I’m not sure which campus I was looking at.  Who knows, maybe both of them.), one of which is where my cousin Loretta earned her post-graduate degree in education.  Okay, for all you score keepers, this is yet another of Uncle George’s offspring, so write it down.

The remains of the fort are kept in great shape (I believe it is a state park) although only two junior officers’ quarters, the guard house and the block house (an early fortification against attack) are standing.  We met an excellent docent there who was full of anecdotal stories of life at the fort.  It seems that the Seventh Cavalry was billeted at Fort Hays prior to its fateful deployment to the Black Hills of South Dakota.  If you are not familiar with this piece of history, I suggest you obtain a copy of the song “Please Mr. Custer, I Don’t Want to Go!” by Larry Verne.  During his time at Fort Hays, Custer was second in command of the Seventh.  But as the commanding officer seemed always to have an excuse to be absent, Custer kept his troops bivouacked outside the perimeter of the post to avoid direct control of the commandant of Fort Hays; that Custer, what a card!

If you ever find yourself in Hays (yeah, I know… but as all of you statisticians are aware, any possibility has some modicum of probability, no matter how small) it is worth a turn around the old fort and the original historic town site.  Who knows, you may be walking in the footsteps of Wild Bill Hickok.

 The Junior Officers’ Quarters at Old Fort Hays, Kansas

From Hays, we set off in search of Red Cloud, Nebraska.  “Why?” is a question we’ll answer later.  En route, there were a couple of interesting things we wanted to see.  Yes, yes; we’re still in Kansas, but hope springs eternal and I hear, just down the road is, what was, the tallest building on the prairie when it was built.  I write, of course, of the Cathedral of the Plains; St. Fidelis Church of Victoria, Kansas.

Construction was started in 1909 and the church was completed in 1911.  It stands at 141 feet from the ground to the tips of the crosses atop the steeples.  The monument commemorating the church as an historical site claims that permission to build the church was granted on the condition that each member family was to commit $3,200 in cash and six wagonloads of limestone blocks.  The church has never been the seat of a bishop and thus is not a cathedral. The nickname was coined by William Jennings Bryan during a visit in 1912.

In addition to the spiritual and regional architectural significance of St. Fidelis, it also pays homage to the Volga-German immigrants that settled the area and are responsible for this monument.  It seems that long before Napoleon or Hitler invaded Russia, Sophie Augusta Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst, German wife of Czar Peter III, displaced him from the Russian throne and assumed the title Catherine II in 1762. Eventually known as Catherine the Great, she penned two manifestos inviting European farmers to immigrate to Russia’s fertile agricultural region along the Volga River.  While peoples of various national origins responded to the offer, it was Germans who made up the vast majority.  And while they made Russia their home, they maintained the language and customs of their homeland. Many of the Volga-Germans immigrated to the plains of Canada and the United States between 1870 and 1912. Among them were my ancestors.  Yes, that’s right, my family came from Russia.  But they were ethnic Germans and there is no proof that any of them are or ever were members of the Communist Party.

Interior of St. Fidelis Church

From Victoria, we shuffled on down the road a couple of miles to Walker in search of another religious edifice.  Although not of such grand dimension, St. Ann’s Catholic Church was the scene of my maternal grandparents’ wedding.  Somewhat modest compared to the “cathedral”, the nearby cemetery is littered with headstones carrying Grandma’s family name, Kippes.  The community of Walker (who knows where that name came from) was essentially a bit (a very small bit) of Germany in Kansas.  In fact, the only non-Teutonic monikers belonged to men who had married into the native families.

What Does One Feed a Flying Monkey?

From Walker, we went in search of historic Fort Harker and its much touted museum.  It seems Kansas follows the universal rule, “Closed on Thursday”; because Fort Harker was closed, and this was Thursday.  So, on we went northward toward the Nebraska line.  Our desire for sustenance led us to an A&W Drive-In restaurant.  I don’t remember the name of the town.  And I do not recollect if we were in Nebraska or Kansas at this point.  But I can tell you that the A&W was the only game in town for both lunch and public restrooms.  I’m not sure how many people live in this town, but on Thursday, they all dine at the A&W.  Even the local ambulance crew was there.  As they were eating the food, I surmised it was safe.  I had a root beer freeze.  If you have ever experienced an A&W root beer freeze, you know I need say no more.  If you haven’t, all I can say is, “You poor, poor sap!”

On we roll, northward to Red Cloud, Nebraska.  And en route we stumble across one of the most understated points of tourist interest I have ever encountered.  You would think something so anomalous would merit more attention.  But if you are ever cruising along Kansas State Highway 181, just south of U.S. Highway 36, look sharp, don’t blink, don’t even daydream about the root beer freeze you had for lunch.  As you enter (just before you leave) Lebanon, Kansas, be on the lookout for the sign directing you to:

If you’ve ever felt you were in the middle of something really big, unless you were standing where you could see this monument, that something was nowhere near as big as it could be.  This point of interest is so large that the commemorators felt moved to build a chapel at the sight so visitors might pray and reflect as their consciences dictate.  However, it is a bit confusing that as big as this point of interest might be, the chapel is tiny.  I mean downright microscopic as edifices of worship go.  It is nothing compared to “The Cathedral of the Plains”.  It cannot even hold a candle to St. Anna’s of Walker, Kansas.  In fact, it is so small (How small is it?)[1] It is so small, it makes Frank seem tall!

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[1]  One must always pay homage to the greatest straight man of all time, Mr. Ed McMahon.

 

 And so, tearing ourselves away from the two-thousand, one-hundred, thirty-seventh wonder of the North American continent, we pushed on to Red Cloud, Nebraska.  Now at this point, the intelligent reader may be wondering, “Why are they going to Red Cloud, Nebraska?”  If you have ever looked at a map of the United States you should know that Red Cloud in not convenient to any route between any where we have been and any where we have indicated a desire to go.  Intuitively, one does not, as a rule, travel north to achieve an easterly destination.  Well, now you have all the clues:

1.      It does not lie on a convenient line of travel.

2.      There are no known attractions of interest.

3.      It is in one of two states the good people of Kansas look down on.

The answer then becomes obvious.  Family lives there.  Yes, yet another of Uncle George’s beloved genetic beneficiaries resides within the city limits of Red Cloud, Nebraska.  In fact, he is the Catholic Parish Priest of Red Cloud, and we (Aunt Barbara and I, he is no relation to the Presbyterian Frank) are the first family to visit him at his ecclesiastical charge, Sacred Heart Church.

Father Paul Frank is the pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Red Cloud, Nebraska.  Indeed, he is so talented that he also ministers to St. Katherine Drexel in Franklin, Nebraska some twenty miles to the west.  As it happened, when we arrived in Red Cloud, we learned that we would be meeting cousin Father Paul at St. Katherine in Franklin at the regular Thursday evening prayer meeting, after which we would join the congregation for their regular Thursday evening post prayer meeting pot luck. Talk about the luck of the Presbyterians; the menu was built around Prime Rib and that is Frank’s favorite kind of rib.  The people of Franklin were generous and friendly and didn’t ask any of those questions that fly-over people usually have for California residents. My guess is they just assumed two middle-aged men traveling across the country together had to be gay and figured that provided all the evidence they needed concerning the state of moral decay in America in the Obama era.  Father Paul provided the prayer leadership and the apple pie.  We returned to the Sacred Heart rectory to spend the night where Frank and I had separate rooms; a first, and last, for this trip.

The next morning we resumed our journey to Clinton, Missouri.  There is little to say about this leg, because there is little of note that lies between Red Cloud and Clinton.  There are the teeming twin metropolises (? Webster’s NCD lists no plural form) of Kansas City (Kansas and Missouri), but we didn’t see it.  It seems they have integrated a toll road into the concrete ribbon known as Interstate Highway 70 that guides you around the city proper.  Not only do they want to exclude travelers from their paradise, they charge them to boot!  Well after Frank finished flirting with the toll attendant, we finally made our way to the final destination, thanks to the help of my Garmin GPS unit and Map Source software.  Why? Because no one thought to write down the address of the Hampton Inn holding our reservation.  Someday technology is going to fail us and then we’ll all be in a world of hurt.  As it turns out, that day proved to be Wednesday of the following week; more about that later.

Where is the Wizard?

As it turns out, Clinton, Missouri is not much of a town.  I’m sure someone knows the reason for its existence.  But I believe, that person left Clinton some time ago.  Luckily he left the lights on.  To our great fortune, our lodgings were provided by Hampton Inn.  I am not sure why that is fortunate.  But in fortunes, it is several magnitudes of fortune greater than Motel 6. They also leave the lights on for you, but they do not use fabric softener on the towels.

As we checked in, cousins started poppin’ out all over.   Many of these people I have seen but once in my life.  To others, I’m a bit closer. But one thing is for certain, they all liked Frank better than me.  He is just a natural schmoozer.  My cousin Mary took a particularly strong interest in him. But as she is a psychiatrist, I have a strong inclination that it was driven by a combination of professional curiosity and instinctive fear.

Frank and I went to dinner with cousin Father Paul and one of Mary’s two sons, Dana.  And of course, we had Mexican.  This joint was hoppin’!  I guess there are few things to do in Clinton on a Friday night and eating Mexican food is not one of them.  I come from California, where the avocados are green, accounting for the color of guacamole.  I’m not sure what they use to make guacamole in Missouri, but the color would never make it into the Crayola Jumbo 64 assortment.  We returned to the hotel and set the pattern for the remainder of the weekend by dominating the sitting area in the lobby.  With all of Uncle George and  Aunt Mary’s children, grand children, great grand children, Frank, Barbara and me, we used up all the chairs, sofas and floor space.  I’m surprised the local fire department didn’t do a drive-by headcount to make sure we weren’t violating the occupancy limit.

As family goes, I can’t even begin to name members of the next generation.  Let’s just leave it that these folks are doing their part to keep the family tradition alive.  The best part was, they all seemed happy to see one another. I suppose there is some comfort in knowing that others share your genetic peculiarities thus reducing the probability that you are a freak of nature.   All you heard was laughter.  It was a joyous group.

The wedding was scheduled for three o’clock Saturday afternoon.  Frank and I figured we could sneak off and hunt up some gun shops while everyone else was doing whatever everyone else does in preparation for a wedding.  We were wrong.  I was informed that I was needed for family photographs at Eleventh Avenue Baptist Church at noon.  Now I’ve been married before and I know the only members of the wedding party that need be present for the whole photography session are the bride and groom.  The problem is, you never know when they are going to call your name and photographers, prima donnas that they are, get grouchy when a subject’s number comes up and that subject is not available.  So not only was the window for gun shop hoppin’ reduced significantly, I was going to have to put on my big-boy pants way early.

After my one appearance in the official photographic record of the blessed event was recorded, I talked Mary, Dana and Frank (like that took a lot of arm twisting) into sneaking out for lunch.  We made our way to a Bar-B-Q joint that looked as if it had been a drive-in during a past life.  The other customers all looked to be locals. The menu was simple and straight forward, as a Bar-B-Q menu should be.  They had the four food groups; beef, pork, chicken and beans.  Sauce abundant was on everything.  The word “broccoli” had never been seen on this menu.  But the big surprise was, before they brought us our sandwiches, they served us each a cinnamon roll.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They gave us each a cinnamon roll.  Now I have been to many Bar-B-Q places in my life.  I have been served gratis pickles, chips, sliced bread, even pickled eggs, but I have never been served a complimentary cinnamon roll in any restaurant, much less a Bar-B-Q joint, in my long and varied dining experience. And it was good.  Free, good cinnamon rolls; my opinion of Clinton, Missouri was starting to improve.

Needless to say, in true family-of-the-bride fashion, we lingered over the cinnamon rolls until just five minutes before the scheduled start of the ceremony timing our return to just beat the bride’s march down the aisle.  Now for those Catholics in the readership, you’ll react to this by thinking, “Yeah, what’s the big deal?”  But for you Protestants out there, the ceremony lasted an hour.  That’s right, a Baptist wedding lasted an hour.  It was all that singing.  Georgine’s sisters, and her youngest brother, Ken, are all pretty talented singers.  Heck, maybe her other brothers are too, but they didn’t sing.  It’s probably a good thing, because the congregation was counting on using the church for Sunday morning service, and if there had been any more singing, I don’t think we would have been done.  At any rate, there was much singing… and signing.  Yes, that’s right; cousin Ken’s wife and a whole lot of third generation offspring mounted the sanctuary stage and signed along with one of the songs.  It was so well choreographed that it seemed the Pastor of the Eleventh Avenue Baptist Church was getting concerned that this might be interpreted as dancing.  And we all know how Baptists feel about dancing. 

A final comment on the wedding; there were two wedding cakes.  One was a traditional white tiered cake, the other a chocolate cake.  Just to be polite, I tried both.  May I suggest two things to any of my readers considering marriage and a wedding celebration?  First, serve two cakes; one white and one chocolate; second, invite me.

After the wedding and reception, we all converged back on the Hampton Inn where we again laid siege to the lobby and frittered away the evening discussing all that could be discussed in the safety of moral constraint.  I believe that overwhelming consensus rated chocolate as high on the list of good things in life and taxes as generally pretty low.  We all expressed opinions on why President Obama’s stock in political favorability is dropping like a rock.  And we all agreed to descend on Mary’s new house the next day before we scattered to the winds.

The next morning looked like a Bedouin camp breaking with all of the family members scattering to the four winds and their respective homes on the plains.  The Colorado contingent, that was my party, got lost trying to get out of a two-square-mile town.  It stands to reason that four successive right turns will not take you in the direction you want to travel, unless your destination is where you are standing now.  None the less, that was our tactical approach for about ten minutes until one of us remembered that there was only one Hampton Inn standing in Clinton and we seemed to keep ending up there. I am not going to lay blame, but Frank was driving. Well, we eventually found the highway out of town and made for Mary’s home in Lawrence, Kansas.

Lawrence, Kansas is the home of the University of Kansas, famous for basketball (James Naismith is buried in East Lawrence at Memorial Park Cemetery) and being the alma mater of much of my family.  Historically, it may be the most besieged town in the Midwest.  Lawrence was a center for anti-slavery sentiment and suffered for it during the Bleeding Kansas chapter of our history.  The hotel at which we all ate lunch was burned to the ground twice: First by the pro-slavery posse of Sheriff Sam  J. Jones in 1852; then again in 1863, Quantrill’s Raiders, hailing from Missouri, laid massacre to the town during their Civil War (or as Cap’n Quantrill would have phrased it, “The Waah of No’the’n  Aggreshun!”) reign of terror.  Just to demonstrate their long memory, Kansassinians (pronounced “jay-hawkers”) still cannot bring themselves to utter the word “Missouri” without delivering a “Red-man” laced glob of expectorant into the gutter. 

Mary’s house is quite the curiosity.  It is situated just two blocks from downtown Lawrence and seems to have been built in the era of recovery from Quantrill’s massacre.  While it has been modernized recently, the main structure of the original house is still evident from the street scene as the front wall is composed of traditional Kansas white limestone.  The interior of the house is done in the craftsman style and beautifully so.  If it weren’t such a long drive to the beach, I’d ask Mary if she would rent me a room.  On the second level, there is a glass bridge joining the original and new construction areas through which one can look down into the hallway connecting the front room and kitchen.  I watched as, without exception, everyone who traveled across the bridge tested it before putting their full weight on it.  Maybe it’s just the conspiracy theorist in me, but does it seem to the reader that maybe a psychiatrist would relish the disarming impact of such an anxiety causing feature in their home?  You be the judge.

As noted, Mary’s house is just two blocks from downtown Lawrence and the Eldridge Hotel (http://www.eldridgehotel.com/#Welcome), prompting the party to walk.  As nice as these people are, they would never make it in California.  If one doesn’t drive their SUV to lunch, how is the valet parking attendant to judge their social ranking?  Isn’t that the reason Cadillac makes the Escalante; to allow one to differentiate one’s self from the Expedition drivers?  We dined in the bar and to our great fortune the final game of the World Cup Soccer tournament was playing.  Yeah, that was my reaction too; when does the NFL season start?  I think some country called España won (why couldn’t it have been a real country we’d heard of, like Spain?).  As noted in the fiery history of Lawrence, this hotel was twice destroyed; a brass plaque located in the hallway between the bar and the lobby commemorating the occasions.  The calamitous events of the past seemingly left no deficit in their ability to construct a club sandwich.

Eventually the time came for us to leave Lawrence, Mary and the rest of the Frank clan and make our way west, destination: Abilene.

Are Those Cow Patties on the Yellow Brick Road?

 It is little more than one hundred miles from Lawrence to Abilene so we arrived at a reasonable hour.  Lodgings in Abilene are scant so we stayed at some tilt-up affair (I believe it was a Holiday Inn Express, but let’s face it, if it isn’t a Hampton Inn, it’s just not worth remembering) just off of the highway on the north side of the interstate.  The only other business on our side of town was a Dairy Queen.  And that is a good thing.  Nothing says “this is a worth-while town” more than a Dairy Queen.  In fact, I believe Arizona law requires a settlement maintain both a Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut to qualify for incorporation.  But that is another story.  Aunt Barbara had so over-indulged herself at lunch in Lawrence she opted to stay in while Frank and I went in search of some provincial comestibles. 

Abilene began its days as a stage stop in 1857 and became historically significant when Joseph G. McCoy established his stockyards there.  Thus, at the nexus of the Chisholm Trail from Texas and the Kansas Pacific Railroad (consolidated into the Union Pacific in 1880) moving west from Kansas City, Abilene became the first great “cow town” of the west, bringing all of the attendant wildness  to East Kansas and such legends as “Wild” Bill Hickok.  It was while serving as Marshal here in 1871 that he mistakenly shot dead his friend and deputy, Mike Williams, who had been running to Bill’s aid after hearing the gunshots from the fight in which Hickok had just killed nefarious gambler Phil Coe.  This stain on his record lead to Bill’s firing by the end of the year.  It is said by some historians to be the event that initiated his slide into dereliction.

In addition to its Wild West heyday, Abilene is also noteworthy as the boyhood home of General/President Dwight D. Eisenhower: more about his Presidential Center later.  Abilene seems at first to be a small, insignificant town.  But as we drove around in search of a restaurant, we discovered it was much larger than a cursory glance suggests.  As with many railroad towns of the old west, the city is much longer east to west than it is wide north to south.  And as we explored, we discovered not only the deceptive size of the town but the wealth that had accrued in the cattle days as evidenced by the surprising number of grand Victorian and Neo-classical mansions scattered throughout.  In many small towns of this era, one will find a micro-neighborhood populated by the high-end homes of the prominent citizens of the day.  But in Abilene, there are dozens (some open for touring) and they are scattered liberally along all of the streets.  There was some money here!

This prosperity was further evidenced by the presence of two freight depots.  Both the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroads have operations in this town (it still sticks in my craw whenever I have to note the BNSF… I pine for the old days of the ATS&F… orange, yellow and black?  I bet they paid some color consultant a ton of money for that hideous scheme… yech!).  That is a rarity outside of major metropolitan areas.

As this was a Sunday afternoon, most of the business district was deserted.  Eventually, we happened upon (you guessed it) a Mexican Restaurant.  Well, this could be called a Mexican Restaurant like a Hyena can be called a dog.  The word I can apply best to this purveyor of God’s favorite cuisine is garish.  It was cleverly tucked into a corner of a property shared with an old motel; an old service station that had been converted to some other purpose known only to the proprietors and their one or two customers; and a makeshift strip mall, the occupancy of which was hard to discern.  The building itself had no windows and was painted in a manner that reminded one of the art of Chicano Park[1], if that art had been delivered at the hands of a LSD influenced Dutchman.  The inside was Shakey’s Pizza meets school cafeteria.  Those interior walls not paneled with varnished plywood were adorned with the same hallucination like murals depicting the history of the Aztec culture (human sacrifice was their central tenet, I believe) as those outside.

A brief aside:  Mexico is a beautiful country that for whatever reason has failed to blossom economically.  There are abundant natural and human resources.  They have created the perfect convenience food in the burrito.  Their flag has an eagle grasping a snake in its talon while balancing atop a cactus!  They seem to have all the elements needed for greatness.  But for some reason, they have failed to put it together.  Could some hint to their challenges be found in their adulation of the Aztec culture; a powerful nation of thousands conquered by Cortez and his five hundred conquistadors?  And how was Cortez able to achieve victory against such untenable odds?  Along the way he recruited all to the other peoples of Mexico who had been pushed around for generations by the elite Aztecs.  The lesson:  Being at the top of the pyramid just means that you’re an irritant to all those whose shoulders upon which you are standing.

Okay, I’m back in the restaurant in Abilene now.  To continue with the description: their idea of energy conservation was to use so few light bulbs as to make one question whether the menu was adorned with pictures of the offerings de casa or just covered in food stains. We were surrounded by local patrons drinking what I assume were pitcher after pitcher of bright (and if you ever saw it, you would even say it glowed) green margaritas, although I have never seen margaritas of such verdant caste.  I felt my way to selecting a chile relleno (chee-lee ray-ay-no for you Kansas readers).  Now a chile relleno is customarily created by slicing an Anaheim chile, gutting it, then filling the inside with jack cheese.  The chile is then dipped in batter, pan fried ala French toast, and smothered in sauce and more cheese.  Yes, they are delicious.  This was not.  Due to the aforementioned lighting scheme, I could not visualize the components.  But there seemed to be some kind of crumbled meat involved (I pray to the gods of culinary justice that it was ground beef) and something occasionally crunchy.  Never, ever get stuck in Abilene on a Sunday evening without a sandwich in your pocket.  I can’t even begin to remember what Frank had, but given the weakness of his aging eyes I would guess it was a number one combination.  Thankfully, the Dairy Queen in north Abilene is open late!

The following morning we visited the Eisenhower Presidential Center.  It is composed of four main elements: The Presidential Library, the museum, the Eisenhower home and, Frank’s favorite, the gift shop.  The museum period covers Eisenhower’s life. Naturally, the majority of the space is dedicated to his military career and the role he played as a leader in the European theater during World War II.

After an exhausting morning of reliving history and poring over the offerings of the gift shop, it was time for lunch.  Naturally, our interest turned to the Kirby House.  The Kirby House is a Victorian home built in 1885 by banker Thomas Kirby that was converted to a restaurant in 1976.

They offer a traditional menu and based on the fact that they were serving at capacity on a Monday, they must be the best place it town.  I do not remember what I ordered.  I do not remember what Frank ordered.  Recalling her favorable experience at the Culver’s in Falcon, Colorado, Aunt Barbara ordered the pork loin sandwich.  They must grow cow-sized pigs in Kansas.  Picture, if you can, a regular sized sandwich bun with an oval slab of fried, seasoned pork loin that extends three inches beyond the circumference of the bun on either side!  It appeared as if the planet Saturn had landed on her plate.  Small children were drawn to our table; not by the spectacle but by the gravitational pull of this astronomical curiosity.  I am not sure which groaned louder; the waiter as he relieved himself of the burden, or the table as it accepted the weight on its shaky legs. Needless to say, after a valiant effort, Aunt Barbara surrendered and asked for a to-go container to save the uneaten portion.  After gingerly loading our foodstuffs cargo into the trunk of the Towncar so as not to damage the suspension, we bid good-bye to Abilene and resumed our trek westward en route Dodge City.

A Brain, a Heart, the Nerve

 Well, finally, this is what I expected.  About fifty miles west of Abilene, we changed highways heading southwest on Kansas State Route 156 which eventually becomes US-56.  The change in terrain and vegetation is striking.  Earlier in the trip, we were surprised about how hilly and green the landscape was.  Now we were in flat country amid the golden plains that we all joke about when we speak of Kansas.  This is truly the lone prairie upon which our doleful singer does not wish to be buried.  As it turned out, this was the only feature of the day to meet our expectations.

To say the least, Dodge City itself is a disappointment.  There is a statue of Wyatt Earp, a statue of a long-horn steer, a lame commercially run “old-west” district that charges ten dollars admission so the tourist can stand closer to the western façade street front than if he simply peers through the iron bar fence, and a beef processing plant that lends an air of atmosphere to the town.

After checking in at the local Best Western (I am a member of their frequent sleepers club) at a rate that proved to be the most expensive lodgings of the trip, Frank and I went out for adventure.  Aunt Barbara opted to stay in with her pork-loin planetoid.  It seems the old-west attraction notwithstanding, that the good people of Dodge are not in the business of promoting their historical heritage for tourism sake.  We drove up and down and around and around and found the most interesting feature of the settlement to be a Vietnam era, M-60 Patton tank parked outside the local VFW hall.  This was worth a stop to examine, or so we thought until we realized that, lacking standing pools of water, mosquitoes hide in well irrigated grass.  Kansas is a wondrous place.

We also found the local airfield at the east end of town.  It offered an A-20 Havoc (that’s an airplane, girls) gate guard that was in poor condition.  And we all know that nothing stimulates the appetite like the peeling paint of an ill-maintained war bird of yore.  Frank decided he was in the mood for pie.  Frank guessed wrong.  We made two or three more passes around, through, up and down Dodge looking for a likely purveyor of pies.  Now I don’t claim to understand the nature of the universe, but there are some rules of nature that just seem not to apply to Dodge City.  One is that a town with many motels will usually offer a Denny’s or similar breakfast oriented diner.  But the closest thing we could find was an Applebee’s, which we know from experience, does not sell pie: sundaes, yes; brownies, yes; pie, not on your life.  We finally found a steak house with what appeared to be a diner appended to it.  Sure enough, that’s what it was.  The waitress was understanding, but unable to assist us as this diner did not serve pie.  They did offer cinnamon rolls and after some deliberation, Frank decided a cinnamon roll would provide some satisfaction for his craving.  Unfortunately, Frank had not checked his karma at the state line and the kitchen was out of cinnamon rolls.  While this may sound like a disappointment to some, I am going to guess that it was a blessing because I envisioned their cinnamon rolls to be the kind that come wrapped in cellophane generally available from the Little Debbie display at your local quickie mart.  During our stay at the diner, while Frank enjoyed his coffee and I my refreshing glass of ice water, we fell into conversation with a patron eating his dinner at the counter.  It is amazing that once locals learn you are from California, they all seem to have a story about their experience in said state.  It is my wont to turn the conversation back to the local news, current events and gossip.  The patron, while giving us the brief version of his life story (I would guess his age at about fifty, but he lived in Dodge; thus the brief history) indicated that he had lived in Dodge for thirteen years and was not finding it a fulfilling place to reside.  Yes, I know, the obvious question is, “Then why do you stay here?”  But I am too polite to ask such questions.  I sensed that his unhappiness was driven by the fact that his country fried steak had no gravy on it and just assumed that he was bound to the city by his pie phobia. The waitress was good enough to not charge us for the coffee and ice water.  We left the diner and made it back to the Best Western.  I do not remember if we ever got anything to eat.

At or about one o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by a need for digestive relief and headed to the bathroom for a Zantac.  When I turned on the light, there were two of me looking back.  I am not a pretty sight in my underwear; imagine the trauma of seeing two of that.  After the initial shock passed I started to focus (mentally, because physically was definitely out of the question) on the implications of seeing double.  Keep in mind, I have not partaken of the demon rum for several years and I have never heard of an eighty-six proof flashback.  I spent several minutes trying very hard to get the two me’s to join forces but with both eyes open, it was impossible.  I figured that this was some anomalous event and if I went back to sleep all would be right in the morning.

Before this experience, I never realized just how difficult it is to sleep when you have reason to believe your life may be in danger.  Unable to convince myself I was not having a stroke or some other major medical event; I woke Frank up and sold him on the possibility that pie might be available at the local hospital emergency room.  While Frank is a trained investigator and hunter of men, his usually steely reasoning is no match for the lure of pie awash in a sea of pre-dawn drowsiness.

You cannot imagine how humorous it is to the participant to engage in a question and answer session with two nurses at the West Plains Regional Medical Center at two o’clock in the morning; especially when they appear to be identical twins.  Now all men have fantasies about nurses.  Don’t groan, women.  I’m sure you all have similar muses about doctors.  It’s not sexist, just social conditioning.  And while my twin nurses did sport rather fetching pony tails, their strong resemblance to George Carlin and the military tattooing on their arms put them outside the norm of my range of attraction.  They were very caring guys however.

The twin emergency room doctors elected to call in the twin radiologists for a CT scan to ensure I was not stroking out.  And after the results came back clean, as did my blood panel, they opted to discharge me after about an hour and a half. I have never had an emergency room wait of less than two hours, much less an entire experience that lasted only ninety minutes.  A few minutes spent with the twin emergency room clerks (I figure it must be an Obama full-employment for twins program) and it was back to the Best Western where I spent the remainder of the night staring at the ceilings.

The next morning dawned with my condition unchanged so I elected not to shave.  After the room-rate-included breakfast and a Frank embellished recitation of the previous night’s events we decided to travel straight through to Montrose where I could consult with Aunt Barbara’s twin ophthalmologists.  We made a bee-lined to US-50, which is a direct route to Montrose.  The only stop of note was for lunch in La Junta, Colorado.  We found a diner that seemed to occupy a deserted J.J. Newberry’s store.  If you do not know what a Newberry’s store is, then you are too young; not too young for anything in particular, just too young in general. Frank did get his pie.  I, like any good republican, had a hot fudge sundae.  I do not recall what Aunt Barbara had for dessert but I’m sure there were two of them.

We did manage to miss a transition ramp in Pueblo, Colorado which took us about twenty-five miles out of our way.  I have got to start trusting the Garmin navigation device and realize that it is trying to tell me something important with its incessant beeping.  It probably didn’t help that I had to cover one eye to read road signs.

We basically back tracked over the Monarch pass and made it into Montrose by early Tuesday evening.  By the time we got home, my vision issue had slowly self corrected and I was able to see the world as it should be; at one with its self.  The next morning I visited Aunt Barbara’s ophthalmologist and he told me what I already knew.  I could see just fine; thanks Doc.  He did offer an opinion based on my description of the malady, that I had experienced an ophthalmic migraine.  Although this might seem painful to you migraine sufferers, I assure you it is not.  The physiology is this:  There are six muscles that control the movements of each eye.  Each muscle has a nerve that receives instructions from the brain. Each nerve is supplied by a tiny blood vessel.  For reasons unknown, this blood supply is sometimes reduced or interrupted and the nerve goes on strike.  Getting no information from the brain as to which direction to point the eyeball, the muscle just gives up.  This results in one’s eyeballs looking in different directions causing double vision.  Eventually, when the blood supply is restored, everything works as intended and the world is restored to its singleness.  Now this is not the only cause for double vision but in the absence of trauma, tumor, aneurysm or stroke (thus the CT scan in Dodge), it is the most likely.

It was a bit fortuitous that we returned a day early because that gave Frank and me the opportunity to wash our delicates before Aunt Marilyn, her daughter Carla and son-in-law Kenny and DJ, a teenager from their church who traveled with them, arrived a day before expected.  They stayed for a couple of days and we played board games, dice games and card games.  Carla and I are pretty close in age and hung out together when ever our respective families were at the same wedding or reunion.  She now lives in Maryland although she is (like many of my family members) a native of Colorado.  Aunt Marilyn (my mother’s brother Carl’s wife) lives in Sterling, Colorado which was recently in the news as the site of a correctional facility escape.  The escapee was later caught in Yuma, Arizona.  I’ve been to Sterling.  I’ve been to Yuma.  I can understand a desire to escape from Sterling, incarcerated or free.  But they would have to put me chains to haul my butt to Yuma… in the summer!

Saturday came and it was time to start the homeward leg of the journey.  Thus far it had been a good journey with no arrests, no injuries and only one trip to the emergency room.  But now the scenario was shifting and Frank and I were going to be operating without adult supervision.  We decided to take a back-door route out of Colorado so as not to alert the New Mexico authorities.  After all, we have been there before!

Click Your Heels Together and Go Home Already

So it is with all good things, this adventure too must come to its natural conclusion.  I’m not sure what that means but it seems a fitting opening for the chapter in which I describe the homeward legs of the adventure.

We left Montrose on Saturday morning bound for the Pueblo known as Taos, New Mexico.  This is a place that Frank had yet to visit.  I was determined to find a route that I had not traveled before.  Perusing the maps, I discovered Colorado State Route 149 that would take us through the heart of the San Juan Mountains.  It promised to be a long day as we would be travelling over three hundred miles on mountain roads.  No interstate highways for us, no-sir-ee!  Our estimated driving time was eight hours.

Our planned route took us east along U.S. Highway 50.  If you’ll remember, that was the highway by which we entered Colorado from the west nearly two weeks ago and it was also the highway on which we relied for much of our travels through Kansas.  I know that Route 66 is much more fabled and US-101 is the foundation of much California lore.  But if you look at a map of the western United States, you will find that as the old roads go, US-50 travels through just as spectacular and historic precincts as any of its more storied brethren.  Just east of Montrose, this highway picks up the Gunnison River.  When we reached the western limits of Blue Mesa Reservoir we redirected southward on Colorado State Route 149.  It climbs sharply into the San Juan Mountains and through the resort town of Lake City on the way to Slumgullion Pass.  Lake City is a convenient place to take a bathroom break.  Fortunately for us, the proprietors of the general store were kind enough to let us use their household facilities as there were no public rest rooms.  The building is an odd combination of storefront, storage and residence.  I’ve known a lot of “different” people in my life, but never anyone who stored power tools in the bathtub.  I gave it some thought and decided it would be rather indelicate to ask them where they bathed.

At the south end of Lake City is a memorial to the victims of Alfred Packer.  The lore is that after being discharged from two different units of the Union Army (during the Civil War… or the WONA for our Southern readers) because of epilepsy, Packer turned to prospecting.  In November 1873 he was a member of a party of men travelling from Utah to the Colorado gold country.  In January 1874 he met Chief Ouray, known as the White Man’s Friend, near Montrose.  The Chief recommended Packer and his party postpone their expedition until spring to avoid the dangerous winter weather.  Packer and five others ignored the advice and left for Gunnison on February 9.  On April 16, 1874, Packer alone arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency near Gunnison.  According to Packer, the party became lost and ran out of provisions.  Packer made several confessions but in the last claimed that upon returning from a scout, he found party member Shannon Bell roasting human flesh.  Ah, these lost miner stories, always with the cannibalism.  Packer claimed that Bell rushed him with a hatchet and Packer fatally shot him in self defense.  It sounds good to me but the courts saw it differently and after several trials he was sentenced to death for manslaughter.  The sentence was reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court and in 1886 Packer was sentenced to forty years, at the time the longest custodial sentence in U.S. history.  He was paroled in 1901 and died in Deer Creek at age sixty-five.  There have been several scientific investigations by Colorado academic institutions including one that matched lead from a Colt pistol found at the Packer site with lead traces from Bell’s wallet which had a bullet hole through it.  It may have been that Packer’s version of the story was true.  Lore has it (albeit untrue) that the students at UC Boulder named their cafeteria Alfred G. Packer Memorial Hall and adopted the slogan, “Have a friend for lunch!”  Oh, those wacky Buffaloes.

Refreshed (that is a euphemism for drained), we continued our slog up Rt.-149 along the steepest grade (9%) of any continuously paved road in Colorado to the summit at Slumgullion Pass, elevation 11,361 feet.  It is named for the yellowish soil comprising the Slumgullion Earth Flow which reminded early settlers of Slumgullion stew (yeah, I never heard of it either). The feature is an earth slide that began about 700 years ago when volcanic tuff and breccias on the southern flank of Mesa Seco slumped down the steep mountainside.  Approximately 300 years ago, a second earth flow started from the top of the mountain and continues to move as much as twenty feet per year.  At that rate we should witness the tumbling of the Rocky Mountains into the Pacific Ocean in about 300,000 years give or take a few millennia. Get your tickets now, folks!

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[1] Chicano Park is a public recreation area just south of downtown San Diego renowned for its Hispanic mural art.



Despite the elevation and grade, the drive is much less white-knuckle than the passes on US-550 between Durango and Ouray.  If you’ve been there, you know what I mean.  If you haven’t, well, you just can’t imagine.  But I digress.

From Slumgullion, we traveled along beautiful alpine highway and transitioned from the Gunnison National Forest to Rio Grande National Forest crossing Spring Creek Pass (elev. 10.901) and began our descent into the drainage of the Rio Grande.  Most of us think of the Rio Grande (it is redundant to call it the Rio Grande River as Rio is the Spanish word for river, it is either the Rio Grande or the Grand River… now who ever heard anybody sing, “I’m and old cowhand, from the Grand River”?) as that meandering watercourse that forms the border between Texas and Mexico.  In fact, it is the fourth or fifth longest watercourse in North America, depending on when the measurement is taken.  The current estimate is that it is just short of 1,900 miles with a watershed of 182,000 square miles.  But who cares about the numbers?

As one descends from Spring Creek Pass, the view to the right, or southwest, is of the of the headwaters of the Rio Grande as it builds from an assemblage of creeks flowing eastward from Canby Mountain, just east of Silverton.  This panorama rivals anything I have seen including Yosemite Valley or Zion Canyon.  Fortunately, the State of Colorado had the wisdom to construct a scenic view turnout to allay the need to try and sneak peeks at the vista while negotiating the curves of Rt.-149.

 

 

Because of the length of the day’s drive, we did not have time to explore the valley as much as I would have liked.  But we did take the time to stop in the town of Creede which is carved out of a notch in the San Juan Mountains. 

Creede was the last Colorado silver boom town, peaking in population of more than 10,000 in 1891, the mines operating continuously until 1985.  It has a colorful history that includes such characters as Bat Masterson and Robert Ford (the man who killed Jesse James).  It avoided the ghost town fate of many boom towns and today operates as; you guessed it, a tourist magnet.  It maintains an old west feel without the yuppification of towns like Durango (sorry Durango residents, but let’s face it, you’ve sold your soul for the Japanese Yen) or the casino-itis of Cripple Creek.

We parked at the north end of town just below the gap and wandered its length, settling on Kip’s Grill as our culinary destination.  Situated at the south end of town, it offered mostly Mexican fare but also burgers and such.  As this was a Saturday they were turning a fair trade and we were forced to take a booth inside rather than seating on the patio.  The iced-tea was free flowing, the waitresses were attractive and friendly and the barbacoa tacos made me sweat.  I would give it four tortillas on a five tortilla scale.

As we prepared to leave Creede behind, the fluffy white clouds of the morning congealed into a threatening gray ceiling as is often the case during summer in the mountains of the Southwest.  The ensuing rain lent a definite mood to the drive along the Rio Grande Palisades as we encountered settlements with haunting names from the past like Wagon Wheel Gap.  Eventually we reentered the modern (?) world as our route took us out of the narrow canyon and into South Fork.  There was some kind of event at the fairgrounds that seemed to have attracted all the residents of these climes but we did not have the time to check it out.

We changed direction at the end of Rt.-149 and began to travel south-westerly on US-160. In doing so, we left the course of the Rio Grande and picked up the San Juan River.   The significance of this is that they drain into different oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific respectively.  I lost count of how many times we crossed the continental divide in one day’s driving but this underscores the role played by the Rocky Mountains in bifurcating the country geographically and culturally. There was a lot that I missed as today’s travels were a bit hurried and I am committed to returning to these precincts in the future for a more thorough exploration.

The highway took us over Wolf Creek Pass (elev. 10,850 ft.) then down a steep grade with a significant switchback.  There is a must-see vista point on this grade.  Positioning myself to take the following picture left me a bit week-kneed.  

 

What you can’t see in this picture is how close I am to the edge, standing on an incline, on scrapple, fighting vertigo.  I could just barely take my eyes off of my feet long enough to ensure I had the camera lined up for the shot.  Now those of you who know me well know that I rarely admit fear of anything except tofu.  But this had me nervous.  One step and the rest of the day would have been spent looking for Dale down there among the pines.  But I did it all for you, readers.  You’re welcome. From Wolf Creek Pass we scampered down into the valley and passing Pagosa Springs transitioned to US-84 and into New Mexico.

About six miles into New Mexico we hit the junction with US-64 which runs east-west toward Taos.  Our first stop in The Land of Enchantment was a service station in Chama.  As noted earlier, the iced-tea was free-flowing at Kip’s.   Our timing was perfect as we lucked into the opportunity of meeting a two-bus-load tour of old ladies that also had imbibed in too much iced-tea.  Luckily the station boasted two restrooms.  Unluckily, they were unisex facilities.  This poses two problems: the first is it neutralizes the natural advantage of being a man; second, is the whole notion of a non-gender specific bathroom confuses the hell out of women of delicate breeding.   There was much discussion and confusion about cultural propriety but in the end we finally got it worked out.

From Chama we continued on our course to Taos.  US-64 is a nice drive, winding its way up the western face of the San Juan Mountains of New Mexico.  Once again, although not nearly as high in elevation or dramatic in topography we crossed the continental divide and entered the drainage of the Rio Grande.  The eastern slope of the San Juan Range at this latitude is rather ugly.  It consists of a broad slope with nothing but scrub vegetation and little enclaves of humanity with a higher derelict auto per square mile count that human per square mile count.  If you’ve ever wondered where all the Gremlins and Pintos ended up, the answer is they are rusting away with every school bus ever cashiered out of service right here on the eastern slope of the San Juans.

As the highway approaches the Rio Grande gorge, it passes Earthship. Earthship is a community of; well let’s face it, gopher people.  In their quest for nature friendly housing they decided the best strategy was to dig a hole in the ground and make the visible surface superstructure as acid-influenced looking as possible. 



Their construction techniques often include the use of glass bottles as wall materials.  I’m not sure how many of these domiciles are scattered across the plain, but they seem thick as rabbit warrens.  If you are interested in these people and their culture, I suggest further study of the phenomenon on an individual basis.  As for my opinion; Kit Carson forced the Indians onto reservations for this?

The highway continues down the slope to the Rio Grande gorge and the cantilever-truss bridge crossing it.  It is a rather spectacular view from the bridge.  As I have experienced it many times and there seemed to be hundreds (okay, dozens) of people visiting as we crossed, I figured Frank could come back on his own time and take a leisurely look if he so desired.  He registered no complaint regarding my plan.

 From the bridge it is only a few miles to Taos and the Kachina Best Western motel therein.  To our great delight, this was the weekend when every Harley-Davidson rider in northern New Mexico was in town.  Now maybe I am over thinking this but; does it strike anyone else as contradictory that the enthusiasts of the motor-cycle, the epitome of American lone-wolf individualism, all congregate together like a swarm of bees, dressed in uniform-like leather garb where ever they go and spend more time standing around admiring each other’s rides than they do riding?  Oh yeah, and open-butt leather chaps on sixty-year old women… things that make you say “brrrrrr!”

And You Were There, and You, and You!

Frank was not particularly enamored of Taos.  And, while I am a bit more broad-minded than he, I have to say I don’t fault him for his opinion.  Taos is not a Currier and Ives setting.  Norman Rockwell did not immortalize the inhabitants of this very first of American communities.  If you do not cherish the pre-Columbian history of the Southwest, Taos is a rather dingy collection of squat, earth colored pueblo-style buildings.  If you recognize it as one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements within the United States while at the same time being one of the youngest, as it still clings ferociously to the originating culture of the Pueblo, you begin to understand its significance and appreciate its earthy beauty.

Taos Pueblo was most likely founded by Anasazi migrating from the Four Corners region about one thousand years ago, fleeing drought.  The first Spanish settlement occurred in 1615. And, as is true with most of the early Spanish settlements, their arrogant mistreatment of the indigenous peoples led to revolt and re-conquest.  The late eighteenth century was characterized by Comanche raids on both Pueblo and Spanish inhabitants.  The United States took possession of New Mexico in 1847 and the territory became a state in 1912, sharing the distinction with Arizona as the last states formed as part of the contiguous forty-eight.

The truth is, however, we did not come here for the history or aesthetics of Taos.  We came because it was the most convenient stop over for a visit to the NRA Whittington Center.

Sunday morning, we headed out to the Center which is a shooting range and museum.  Whittington is about ninety miles north-east of Taos, out on the plains, close to Raton, New Mexico.  I opted to take the Taos Enchanted Circle route which offers some spectacular scenery.  Unfortunately, I neglected to load the proper travel route into the Garmin and well, let’s say the Welcome to Colorado sign convinced me I had missed the Red River turnoff.  It was only about twenty-five minutes out of the way but as always; Frank took it in good stride.

Back on track, I was amazed at the commercial growth that had occurred since my last visit to Red River.  It is a ski and summer mountain resort and has exploded in recent years. The streets were teeming with Sunday morning breakfast seekers.  We continued on through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to Eagles Nest.  There we rejoined US-64 and snaked our way along the course of the Cimarron River to the town that shares its name. Cimarron is the remnant of a once important stopover on the Santa Fe Trail.  There is not much left to see but the St. James Hotel. If you do find yourself in the neighborhood, stop and check out the old hotel registers displayed in the lobby.  They contain a veritable who’s who of the American West as everybody who was anybody passed through Cimarron.

Cimarron marks the eastern limit of the Rocky Mountains (Sangre de Cristo range) and from here east you are in the plains.  You can almost smell the buffalo turds.  The land is dry, flat and scrubby.  We flew on down the road until we got the Whittington Center.

Although the complex is owned and operated by the National Rifle Association, it is open to all. They boast the requisite gift shop.  The excellent museum chronicles the development of the firearm in American History and offers a great collection of sample pieces.  On the frieze of the exhibit walls, are murals depicting local historical events related to the different periods of firearms development. If you are not interested in guns, well just stay home.

The Center also offers what may be the largest and best designed shooting facility in the United States.  There are ranges for all the varying types of shooting competition.  There are even condos for the convenience of participants during major competition events.  They also have RV camping areas for visitors.

After we absorbed all the museum had to offer, we drove out to see the ranges.  Just as we did, a little thunder storm moved through, throwing lightning bolts around haphazardly.  We joined some shooters who had sheltered themselves under a patio roof at the shotgun clubhouse.  We asked a woman there if it was safe to drive out onto the range and she said, “Sure, if you stay in your truck!”  We opted to remain with those whose wisdom chose shelter and were invited to come on in and sit a spell.

As is usually the case with shooters, a general camaraderie ensued and they were soon sharing stories of New Mexico and their lives.  One old gent, a still-active mining engineer from Trinidad, Colorado (just over the border from Raton) was especially effusive and told us stories of his life from World War II forward including stints as a law man, international mining engineer and shooter.  What a find!

After an hour or so, the storm had moved on towards the Oklahoma pan handle and our hosts were getting anxious to get back out on the shooting line.  We thanked them for their hospitality, drove about the facility a bit more, and then headed back toward Taos.  We stopped in Cimarron for a bite at what most resembled a Foster’s Freeze.  But the resemblance did not run deep.  I think those were the worst rolled tacos I have ever eaten.

At Eagles Nest, we turned south to continue on the remainder of the Taos Enchanted Circle tour.  Near Angel Fire (a ski resort community) we stumbled over the New Mexico Vietnam War Memorial.  Now this was quite a find considering we had conducted a fruitless search the previous evening in Taos.  There is a highway sign in south Taos on the main highway that indicates the presence of said memorial and points down an avenue running east.  We drove up and down the avenue without success, thinking we might be experiencing the St. George phenomenon of the vanishing museum.  Little did we know that the memorial was on the other side of a mountain range. We were gratified to have found the memorial as we make a point of visiting such sites when we travel.  We were less than gratified to find the memorial closed… but not surprised, given our history.

The memorial is the work of Dr. Victor and Jeanne Westphall, the parents of Marine First Lieutenant David Westphall who was killed in a 1968 ambush in Vietnam.  It is the first Vietnam Memorial built (begun in 1971) in the U.S. and the only state park dedicated solely to a Vietnam Memorial.  All indications are it is a very solemn place and I am committed to visiting again sometime in the future.

From the memorial we headed back to Taos on the southern half of the Enchanted Circle.  By the time we snuck into town, it was past eight o’clock and all of the quaint eateries were closed.  We ended up at Sonic.  Having sated ourselves on fried this and sugared that, we retired to the hotel for round two of the battle with the leather-clad, geriatric, youth-chasing motorcycle loiterers.

Monday morning we broke fast at Mike’s; one of those true old-fashioned family restaurants that Denny’s tries very hard to convince you it is, but isn’t.  Then we hit the road south.  Our route was to take us past the outskirts of Santa Fe, into the twisted pretzel of the I-25, I-40 interchange at Albuquerque and spit us out in the direction of Flagstaff (our stop for the night) and eventually to California.

I opted to take the less traveled path of state routes NM-518 and NM-76 which make a bit of a bow to the east of the more direct NM-68.  This is a picturesque route that winds its way through old Spanish villages bearing names like Las Trampas, Truchas and Chimayo.  These are old settlements that might cause the unfamiliar to believe they were in Mexico.  The most popular plaster color is pink with grey patches.  Every yard boasts a kitchen garden, chickens and a goat pen.  The names on businesses and mailboxes are mostly Spanish.  If you wander off of the main highway to explore a bit you will be driving on unpaved roads.  Inevitably, the village business area will be built around a public square which is essentially a grass lot.  Pedestrians stop and look as you pass by trying to figure out which of their neighbors could afford to buy a new truck.  They do not expect tourists.

When we wound our way down the mesa wall to join US-285 and the twenty-first century, the spell was broken by the modern buildings and fast-food availability; we had to face the truth that this journey was all over save the long trek across the desert.  I will spare myself the monotony of narrating the last two days driving as we’ve taken this route so many times we can almost name the New Mexico and Arizona towns from memory.  I will also skip over Flagstaff (ate at the same diner, slept in the same motel) as we found no new gun shops and couldn’t even find some of the old ones.

So there is the whole, true story.  Okay, maybe not the whole story, because there are always parts that can’t be included if we want to maintain total honesty.  And I wouldn’t want to have to include anything that wasn’t completely true!