We are in kansas!

Our travel map has had a big blank spot right in the middle for the past 3 years- and we finally did something about it. After a 6 hour drive from Colorado Springs, we finally made it to our first stop, Dodge City, which meant we could put Kansas on our map:

We are camping in Kansas, y’all! I know what you have heard- that Kansas is flat and boring, but there are lots of rollingl hills, and lots of crops and little towns. Our first stop was Dodge City, which you may have heard of in a western movie or TV show. We stayed 2 nights, giving us one day to play. Dodge City had interesting history, with thousands of cattle being driven to the railhead at Dodge City, which was the easternmost railhead for cattle. By the mid 1880s the rail line reached Colorado, and Dodge City was on the way to being a booming town. Then the legislature banned Texas cattle because the longhorns carried a tick that caused devastating losses of other cattle, ending the cattle trade. Dodge City was hit by a blizzard, a fire, another blizzard, and prohibition, all working to turn the booming wicked city into a settled community.

Cattle is still big business here, which we learned about on the Trolley Tour. There are several feed lots, (which you can smell if the wind is right- or wrong).

This is just a small portion of this feedlot!

There are several processing plants too- but we won’t talk about that! On the trolley tour we saw a white buffalo:

From a distance he looked like a pile of hay, but then you can tell he is a buffalo by the shape of his head.

We also visited the boot Hill Museum, which had a lot of information about the history of Dodge City.

And we saw Boot Hill, where many people had been buried (they have since been moved):

We visited Fort Dodge, which was founded to protect a long section of the Santa Fe trail. It was a supply post and base of operations to protect settlers from Indians from 1865 to 1882.