The Old Santa Fe Trail

Terry and I got on the road very early Sunday morning and followed US Route 50 east out of La Junta. This highway follows the Arkansas River and the Old Santa Fe Trail through Dodge City where it branches east while US Route 56 (which angles to the northeast) parallels the river past Fort Larned and Pawnee Rock to Great Bend. We didn’t stop at Fort Larned, but I wish we had. It was the gateway to the Old Sante Fe Trail and one of a chain of forts that protected traders and settlers along the trail. In the final days of its use, it protected the railroad builders. Despite having been sold into private hands back in the 1880s, all but one of the buildings is original to the site. They had to rebuild the blockhouse after the Park Service repurchased the property and designated it a historic site in 1964.

Doug, after driving through Great Bend, I know why you left!

Along the road to Dodge City, the smell of the many feed lots wafts gently across the landscape—like a sledgehammer! One sign on one feed lot said it could accommodate 11,000 cattle. That’s a lot of bull…!
Beef, it’s what’s for dinner!

We didn’t stop in Dodge this time around. We were there in 2003 when it was our first stop out of Colorado City and visited Boot Hill and Historic Front Street then. It’s a fun place with some museum-like charm. The gunfight in the street and the barroom/dancehall show were pretty good as was the chuck wagon meal.

We drove US 56 to I-70 and turned east to Salina, KS where we put up for the night at the KOA of Salina at 3 o’clock Central Time. (The Time Zone change occurred when we got one county into Kansas.) We had driven over 380 miles and it was time for a dip in the pool.

I checked the internet to see what the predicted path of Hurricane Dennis is for the next few days. Supposedly he will rapidly diminish in strength but he is heading right up the Mississippi Valley. We will be just the other side of St. Louis tomorrow night. He will reach St. Louis on Tuesday. We will move more quickly into Ohio (near Dayton) on Tuesday night. Dennis will hook a little to the east according to the forecast bringing him right behind us to Dayton/Columbus on Wednesday/Thursday. We turn northeast and he continues eastward. Hopefully, he will skirt to our south as we get to the Geneva, Ohio area on Wednesday night. We would like to stay in the Geneva area for two nights before heading to the Bolt Hole in the Adirondacks, but if he catches up or the forecast changes, we may have to make a run for it.