McPherson to Dodge to Alamosa

Greetings from Colorado:

I have learned that the internet connections at KOA's are very slooooooowwwww so I am using alternate internet access to make this post.  I am hopeful this will go smoother than the last one.

From McPherson we made our way to Dodge City, Kansas.  Jim is a pretty big Gunsmoke fan so this stop was a given.  Before arriving in Dodge, however, we made a stop at the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.  The NWF's are feeling the brunt of the funding cuts to the National Park System so many of the Visitor Centers are closed or opened sporadically.  My excitement to see Quivira was fueled in part by sightings of Whooping Cranes in the Refuge.  Unfortunately, we were way too early for the spectacle as seen below. 
 

 

The other disappointment at the Refuge was the very high wind.  No birds were flying although I did see a few on the ground.  We saw a deer in the woods but it ran as we approached.  We ended up leaving quickly before we blown away.

 

From there we headed to Dodge City, arriving around 11:30 AM.  We had to go to the Boot Hill Museum which includes a replica of Main Street Dodge (below), the Boot Hill Cemetery (2nd photo below), and a re-enactment of a real Dodge gun fight.   



 

Before the gunfight I was able to catch an ironic shot of Jim in front of the Long Branch Saloon.  

 

After the gun fight, we went into the Saloon and had our photo taken in front of the famous bar, courtesy of Miss Kitty.

 

Saturday afternoon, we attended Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Dodge.  If you look at the shot of old Main Street above, you will see that the skies were not at all threatening.  By 5 PM things had changed.  Jim dropped me off as close to a door as he could get since it was raining quite hard.  By the time he parked the car, it had started to hail.  They were not large hail stones but they came down hard for at least 15 minutes.  Jim said it sounded awful in the car.  By the time mass ended, so had the rain.

 

We had the wonderful experience of speaking to the priest after Mass.  He is from Nigeria and will be celebrating 22 years as a priest on June 22nd.  We told him we were passing through the area and he gave us a special blessing for safe travels.  I don't think we can have too many prayers for safe travels.  In turn we told him we would pray for him on the 22nd.

 

We got out of Dodge on Sunday morning and drove to Alamosa, Colorado stopping briefly at Great Sand Dunes National Park.  It's hard to imagine how huge these sand dunes are but if you enlarge the photo below, look at the tiny dots near the bottom of the dunes, and consider that the dots are people, that will help.  The sand was deposited over thousands of years by run off from the near by mountains. 

 
Near our KOA in Alamosa, there is a beautiful NWR that I visited twice.  Again, the Visitor's center was closed.  For me it was thrilling because I saw five Life Birds (first time I've seen them in my life) there - American Bittern, Cliff Swallow, Wilson's Phalarope, White Faced Ibis, and (my personal favorite) Yellow Headed Blackbird below. 

 

Jim was not as thrilled as I was but he gets an assist on the Blackbird since he spotted several and pointed them out to me since I was looking in the other directions.



 

Well, I think this is enough for one post.  After Alamosa we headed to Montrose and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and some more golf.  The next post will be after that.

 

Mattie and Jim