Ruts, Cheyenne Bottoms, Monument Rocks, and Fraziers

After a few wonderful days at our home, we packed up to go to "Colorful Colorado"!  We set our alarm for 6am.  

The "trunk" of our Infiniti is not nearly as large as our Ford was.  Papa had to squeeze to get everything loaded.

At McPherson, we hopped onto Highway 56 and headed west.  East of Great Bend, we went north to Highway 4.  We passed the Santa Fe National Ruts.  They are hard to pick out after all these years have passed.

"The Santa Fe Trail was once a major route through the Southwest. Trade goods and mail traveled over the trail until the railroad replaced it. For over 50 years, thousands of wagons traveled over the route, carving deep ruts into the land. Seen from the air, their tracks look as if someone dragged a giant rake across the land. Today there are very few of these ruts left."  But we passed one area of them.

 

We stopped at the Cheyenne Bottoms lookout.

"Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira National Wildlife Refuge are both wetlands in Kansas that are important stopovers for migrating birds.  Cheyenne Bottoms is a lowland basin and the largest freshwater marsh in the US interior, while Quivira is an inland salt marsh. Both are part of the Kansas Wetlands Complex." 

It is really dry now due to lack of rain.  Because it is a rest stop for between 750,000 and 1 million birds each year during their annual migrations south, it will probably have an impact on that.  

We made a pit stop on our "migration" to Colorado in Hoisington.

I'd love to know the story of the old settler who built this place.

At Taos road, we went north.  It was 15 miles of gravel road that would lead to Monument Rocks.  Open range country so you have to watch for cattle.

There it is!

I've seen some spectacular photos of the sun setting through this opening.  But it was only noontime this day when we came.  It is still spectacular to look at!!

As we were driving back to the highway, we encountered a truck that left us covered in dirt.

Looking at our back window from inside.

We would need to definitely wash our car when we got to Mindy's! 

We passed the Buffalo Bill Cultural Center close to Oakley.  That is on my "to do" list.  We got onto Highway 70.

After Limon, we got on another dirt road to stop to see long time friends, the Frazers.  Claire and Maelle have been penpals for some time.

They were in Sunday School together way back when!  Along with Kate!

We had a good visit and "kettching up".  Reminiscing.  When our church did Judgement House, Ryan made such a good Jesus character!

We continued on to Denver.  We take 86 there now.

 Mountain country!