We left Wichita this morning and drove through some of the city on the way out. We drove down the main downtown street with many old, restored buildings, as well as a couple of very nice looking arenas. A surprise to me was that there is a river, the Arkansas, that flows through the city. They have made this a very nice feature. We stopped at one of the parks with a pedestrian bridge across the river and a large sculpture of an Indian (I think). We then stopped at a QT for some gas and coffee. Made us feel right at home! (QuikTrip, or QT, is a gas station chain in Atlanta and there were none after we left Atlanta until we got to Wichita.)
Continuing westward, we stopped for lunch in Yoder, KS, an Amish community. We had a bison burger with locally sourced bison, and fresh strawberry pie - available for only about 3 weeks a year. Yum X2!
As we traveled further west, the cattle farms gave way to grain farms. The agricultural land used for growing wheat, alfalfa, corn, soybeans and sunflowers was vast and seemingly endless. About the only thing growing now is winter wheat, with green fields reaching to the horizon. There is very little character to the landscape, just flat endless fields. There are grain elevators all along the way, storing all that they grow and transferring it to trucks to take it to wherever it goes to be made into food.
This picture of winter wheat doesn't really convey the vastness of these fields.
One of the big businesses in Dodge City is beef - feeding out and slaughtering, with two big packing plant in town. Because of this, most of the 18 wheelers we encountered were carrying livestock. And, when they passed us, it was very fragrant!!
Somewhere in Kansas, we passed this kennel - the TT British Kennel with a British flag on the side of a barn. We had to stop and take a picture. Unfortunately, the owner was not there at the time.
As we got closer to Dodge City, we discovered another resource they have - wind. About 20 miles outside of the city, there is a huge windmill farm. It went for miles and had hundreds and hundreds of massive, 3-bladed windmills. They were mesmerizing with their blades slowing rotating in unison. You can't really appreciate the size and numbers from the picture.
We finally made it to the hotel. Total mileage so far is 1186 miles. We checked in and then drove over to Jim Johnson's house to visit and check out what the "Organization" will be doing for the next few days. Dave Woerpel came in from Wisconsin today and there will be a couple more coming in tomorrow. Dinner was at Casey's Cowtown Club and then it was back home for a good nights sleep before getting to work tomorrow.
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