This is a photo of what appears to be an endless prairie. In
the early 1800's this was an endless grassland.
And speaking of endless, Colorado Highway 71 appeared to be
without end. The sign before we entered here warned that there were no
services for 75 miles.
This is a photo of some of the hundreds of wind turbines we
saw along the early part of our route today.
This is a photo of the Kit Carson Museum.
I made this photo when we were stopped at a traffic light in
Lamar, Colorado. The lighted sign which is just above the truck in
the middle, shows the temperature to be 103 degrees.
Day Twenty. Overnight Garden City, Kansas (Pop. 27,000). All is well.
Today we followed secondary roads through Colorado and Kansas, ending the day in Garden City, Kansas, which is 50 miles west of Dodge City, Kansas. Garden City is on Highway 50 and 400, which tracks the Santa Fe Trail. In the early 1800's The Santa Fe Trail was the connecting route from Franklin, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the late 1800's the Union Pacific followed the same route, and when Highway US 50 was built it did the same.
Our travels today have been across high prairie grasslands. This land was once covered by millions of buffalo.
The fourth photo in this post is of The Kit Carson museum, located in Kit Carson, Colorado (Pop. 233). A history of the town of Kit Carson includes the story of a Russian Archduke guided by General George Armstrong Custer killing a buffalo when the town was surrounded by buffalo.
Kit Carson, Colorado was founded in 1838, and took the name of the famous Kit Carson (He would live another 30 years from the founding.). There is no record of Carson ever being in the town that still bears his name. Since it was a railroad terminus for a brief time it was a wild place, with saloons, six guns, shootings, and even a lynching. Today it is a wide spot, with a few businesses, and not even a stop light. It seemed interesting, the name was a curiosity, and they had a nice old depot for a museum...so we stopped.
The elevation from my start of the day was just over 5,000 feet. Garden City, Kansas' elevation is 2,839, and it continues to drop as we travel east.
The land is semi-arid, and there is cultivation of the land, often with the assistance of irrigation. There were/are very few small towns along the route, and only a couple of slow-down areas in the last three hundred miles. The first photo with this post represents most of the landscape, although there were a few areas of very low rolling hills.
Early along our route today we saw hundreds of wind turbines. I do not know the size of the wind turbines in the third included photo, but they are huge. A quick search showed that the average height for new wind turbines is 275' and the rotor diameter is 308' (Recall that a football field is 300'.) One source said that a wind turbine that produces 2 MW of electricity cost $3-4 Million (I know ...a large range.) as an installed price. There were hundreds of these along my route of travel today. There were a few not turning, but nearly all were...clockwise.
It was hot today with triple digit temperatures for part of the time. We encountered strong, gusty winds after we left Lamar, Colorado, en route to our destination. The winds today appeared to be as strong as those we had yesterday, and made for an interesting ride.
Another good day.
No comments:
Post a Comment