Kansas

We've been on our Summer break for a few weeks now and have covered so much ground....and I am so far behind with this blog, so I hope I do it justice!! Stu and I left the house in Denver on June 10th...but not before I lost the car licence papers and as it's an offence not to carry them in the car with you, we had to go to a Licensing Dept in Denver and queue for 2 1/2hrs to get served, to get a copy of our licence papers for $2!!  What a frustrating place that was!!
So we were finally on the road.....it was a really hot day...around 38C, and our plan was to get into Kansas as far as we could......

but not before stopping at the Buffalo Bill sculpture in Oakley.  As those of you who have been paying attention to my previous blogs will know, I pretended to learn about Buffalo Bill when I visited his gravesite. Well I've forgotten everything I told you, but I was impressed with this amazing, huge sculpture of him and a buffalo...the craftsmanship was exquisite.

We had spoken with Janis from CITEL before we left for our trip and she had helped us with some direction to take for our trip, (the USA is quite a large area to cover in 10 weeks!!) and what to see. One of the places she recommended in Kansas, were the Pyramid Rocks...or better known now as Monument Rocks.  Again (as mentioned before) signposting and directions in the US are pretty primitive, so we took a punt on a gravel road and found these speccy rock formations in the middle of nowhere....

It was a treat to be out there on our own and on the way back we came across more oil pumps.  Now I know these are just oil pumps, but I actually love seeing them.  They are like some prehistoric creatures in the landscape, quietly feeding themselves...

 Most of the landscape in Kansas is pretty flat, with lots of corns fields, and hardly any trees. 

so there aren't too many places you can pull over for a wee....is that just an Australian thing, or is it just a Cumming family thing? (I remember when we drove down from Wangkatjungka years ago when the boys were little and we'd always stop on the side of the road for them to do a wee.  Anyway we had driven down to Midland Gate to do Christmas shopping (with 1000's of others) and the 4 of them got out the car in the car park, dropped their pants and did a wee!  I couldn't believe it! You can take the boys out of the Kimberley, but you can't take the Kimberley out of the boys!!)
Anyway, I digress.....it was really, really windy and there were literally hundred of wind turbines scattered across the plains....for good reason.

We saw an area where they had laid out the propeller blades, and the posts and each individual blade was huge and then we saw a train carrying them It was amazing to see.

We finally arrived at Dodge City....

and checked into our hotel......ON WYATT EARP BLVD!!!...across the road from DOC HOLLIDAY liquor shop!!  Stu was in his element... after 30 years together, I have only just discovered..... he loves Westerns!  I had no idea!

The next morning we "got the hell outta Dodge City", but took a few photos on the way....

Stu tried to impress a few cowboys with his muscles...but got nothing back!

Old Dodge City

Stu and I aren't into shopping AT ALL, so we've decided the one memento we will get for our time in the States is a number plate for each State we visit.  Not too sure what we will do with them, but it will be our keepsake.  So we have been going into "Thrift Shops" along the way seeing if they have number plates.
This is proving more difficult than expected as each State seems to have a different name for number plates....licence plates, licence tags, car plates.... you would think it would be fairly universal...but the problem is our accent!  I insisted after stopping at that many "Thrift shops" and searching for number plates, that we would ask as soon as we walked in the door..thinking this would save us time!  Not to be.
Firstly they look at you in amazement, then they ask you to repeat what you said...a few times....then they repeat it, but really slowly....then they "umm and aahh and hmmmm" as to whether they have them, then they say..."I'm not too suuure"!!
One shop we stopped at in Kansas in a really tiny town...we went inside and a bell rang to say someone had entered the shop.  We were the only ones in there and were looking around for someone we could ask for help.  After a few minutes, we heard a noise out the back, then this woman, aged about 90, with a walking frame, slowly, slowly, slowly shuffled out.  We looked at each other as if to say'''uh oh, this is gonna be a long one"....so Stu asked...."Do you have number plates?"  She couldn't hear a word he was saying...deaf as a post.. so we were there for about 5 mins having this one sided conversation...she kept saying "excuse me", he kept getting louder, changing his words, speaking slower...nothing worked...so in the end we just smiled and thanked her and left! We couldn't look at each other for fear of wetting ourselves from laughter (did I mention there are no trees to squat beside to go to the toilet in Kansas?")
At another 2nd hand shop we were delighted to stumble across Dorothy....she was looking pretty good, despite her predicament...

and had a few mates with her.....

I was surprised she hadn't been caught up in this sand storm that was howling across the road.....did I mention Kansas is windy?

and very green and we were really glad we visited....but we're not in Kansas anymore......

We're in.....

which we really only passed through to get to the next State, but we did stop at a 2nd Hand shop...

found a sign for Alex (Alex Gadd - Jakeb's school mate).....

 

followed a lovely creek....

until we were in the next State.....stay tuned!!