I had pretty much missed Kansas and Missouri on my first loop around the country, so decided that it was time to spend some time there and see what they have to offer.  Kansas is… well… Kansas is what you think it is.  It’s a lot of grasslands, silos, wind turbines, and a few bored cows.  It was… not the most exciting place I’ve ever been.

I stayed in Dodge City overnight, hoping that it would turn out to be the Wild West city it had a reputation for being.  Well… it probably is a lot of fun in the summer, since there’s a museum about westward expansion, a walk of fame, and costumed reenactments and such.  But I was there on a rainy winter Sunday, and very little was even open.  This wasn’t a crisis, since Dodge City was just a ‘nice to have,’ not a major highlight for me, but I’m definitely learning a lesson about which places are great to visit in winter because there are fewer crowds, and which places are just nonexistent in winter.

Well, I got up rather cold and stiff in the morning, and went over to see Doc Holiday on the walk of fame.

I sat down and drank my coffee with him… but he kept his hand on his gun the whole time, making me slightly nervous.

Not far away was this very nice old steam engine, reminding me that that this was the real way that the west was won.

Probably without the Christmas lights though…

I tried sitting in the engineer’s seat for a while.  It lacked comfort.  The whole engine room was quite impressive though.

And that was my experience of Dodge City, Kansas.  There was indeed a lot more there, including Fort Dodge just out of town, but there was just nothing open when I was there.  Probably the most exciting things to happen to me while I was there were a slightly deflated tire, and three trucks that came through carrying the blades of a new wind turbine.

So I had a peaceful, boring couple of days.  It must be time to… Get Out of Dodge!

[Note: Yes, I admit, I pretty much went to Dodge City so I could use that line…  I’m not entirely sure it was worth it.]