Heading East Day Seven 1 July, 2014 Day Eight Day Nine Day Ten (Kansas City) Day Seven 1 July, 2014 Alamosa, Colorado to Lamar, CO 262 miles
I had such a great ride this day that I am going to start off with the commentary instead of holding it to the end. This was the kind of experience that draws you into biking in the first place.
Day Seven Commentary
The Big Ride 2014 Day Seven
As I was heading East out of Alamosa I was eyeing the clouds hanging over the Sangre de Christo Mountains with some trepidation. While I was not really afraid of the rain, we had experienced a lot of lightening the night before and I did not want to be riding into a thunderstorm. But first a little breakfast. I had been in this area lots of times in the past few years and knew that the population was almost exclusively Hispanic. That means lots of good, and fairly cheap, Mexican food. I was looking for a place to have a breakfast burrito in honor of Eugene Murray. I remember the horrified look on Eugene's face when he was served his very first breakfast burrito. He never really warmed to Mexican food of any sort but he is such a good sport that he soldiered on and nearly finished it. I on the other hand love them. My stomach got the better of me as I drove by the turnoff for the Fort Garland Museum. I had driven by this State historical site three different times in the last few years and was determined that I would stop in to see the exhibits: the very next time I was in town. I missed it again. Normally this would not be unusual but this Fort was a base for Kit Carson at times during his career as a scout and guide for the US Army during the Indian Wars of the mid to late 1800's. My Mother always claimed we were related to Kit in some convoluted way. I have never been able to confirm this but she knew her relations out to the firth or sixth cousins twice or three times removed so her claim had credibility with me. However at the time the Del's Diner held more appeal to me than an old Indian Fort. They served a marvelous burrito and afterwards I was on my way to the La Veta Pass which you can just see as the snow covered peaks in the picture below.
Del's Diner Fort Garland Colorado
The run up the pass was picturesque but uneventful. I did encounter a few road construction delays but these are expected in the mountains during the Summer months. So far, no rain and it looks like the worst of the clouds have moved off to the South and away from the main highway.
Just a couple of miles beyond the top of the pass is the turnoff for the village of La Veta which is snuggled into the high mountains which surround it. I pull off the road for a couple of shots which do not turn out to show much of the grander of the place but at least indicate where I am headed. The South is masked in clouds but I decide to go ahead since I have never been in this area before and look forward to the exploration.
As I pass through La Veta and head up the canyon beyond, I am impressed with the scenery and taken aback by the pastoral beauty of a herd of horses grazing in a grassy meadow with gigantic red cliffs towering in the distance.
I went online to check the Google Maps to see if there was a street-view of some of these rock formations. The pictures I took really do not capture their visual impact. What I found was a nearly exact replica of one of my shots which I thought I would include as interest. I also was quite surprised at how populated this area was. Not in terms of any real settlement density but for a location that is so remote from any major urban areas, there were a surprising number of vacation cabins and cottages and a few very nice resorts as well. I guess it is not surprising given the scenery and seclusion.
Google Street view Screen Capture Google Maps
Along parts of the road there were a number of vacation cottages and some very nice lodges as well but as we approached the pass I re-entered the clouds and the temperature dropped dramatically. I was unsure how mush higher or farther I would need to go in order to cross over to the Eastern slope and begin to descend. Fortunately it turned out to be a fairly steep pass and I was quickly over the summit and out of the clouds on the other side. Later I tried to map the elevation of the road over the pass from the village of La Veta to the foothills town of Trinidad, Colorado.
It is easy to see the steepness of the pass and how quickly it drops on the East side, followed by a much more slow and gradual descent to the town of Trinidad situated on the plains below. The pass is just below 10,000 feet in altitude but fortunately I do not have to stay up that high for long and the weather continues to warm the lower I drop. The other major change on the East side is that there are almost no homes or ranches. The development seems to stop right at the pass. I speculate that the land on this side must still be public lands and not open to development. I also thought it might be part of the old Spanish Land Grant that became the Trinchera ranch. The ranch was owned by the Forbes family for many years but was recently sold to undisclosed buyers. The original grant was of over a million acres and was given by the Spanish King to a subject that at that time was a resident of Mexico. The land was annexed into the United States after the invasion of Mexico during the Mexican War of 1846-1847 when the US occupied Mexico City and much of central Mexico. The peace treaty stipulated that legal Land Grants would be respected and recognized by the US but most were ignored or overturned by US courts that demanded exceptionally stringent documentation of the grants that was impossible for most owners to produce. The Trinchera was an exception and the land from the crest of the Sange de Christo Moutains to the crest of the San Juan Mountains and comprising most of the Southern part of the San Luis Valley formed the ranch. Since the land I was riding through was on the Eastern Slope of the Sange de Christo's, I realize that this was not part of that land grant. Whatever the reason, the land remains wild and untamed until you are well down into the valley on the road that runs along the mid-sized Pergatorie River
As you head down the valley you come across a number of dusty, decaying, largely adobe brick hamlets huddled along the road. Most appear to be on the verge of desertion but have a few residents remaining. Most feature a small and disused church in their center. There seems to be a series of them that are startling similar and spaced about 4 to 5 miles apart. I wonder about the origin of these strange little villages and then realize that this valley was most likely settled by Mexican colonist long before the introduction of cars and well maintained roads. Hamlets would've had to be located within easy walking distance to the surrounding fields in order to the residents to reach them and return each
night with enough time to spend on tending and harvesting the crops. The churches would have to have tended the pheasants where they lived and the Catholic church must have constructed a entire network of small parishes throughout the valley. I took a screenshot from Google Maps of a typical church. There is no longer any really sustainable economic base for these communities and its likely they will soon so the way of the church buildings themselves, shuttered and largely forgotten. At the foot of the valley lies the small, approximately 9,000 population, town of Trinidad. Unlike the earlier community this place seems to be thriving which is undoubtably due to its location on Interstate 25, the main North-South route in Colorado which has brough both people and business activity to the town. Many of the older buildings have been preserved and instead of presenting a fading present the communitiy gives off a rather quaint and rather appealing impression. I am starting to get hungry when I reach Trinidad and I am on the outlook for a place to eat but one does not strike my fancy so I decide to push on to the next town of La Junta, Colorado which lies about 80 miles Northeast along US Highway 350. The scenery goes from extremely interesting to the
opposite extreme with miles of endless plains on every side. The only thing that breaks the monotony is a sign that informs me that this is the original route of the Santa Fe Trail which was one of the major migration and wagon train routes during the exploration of the American West in the early-mid nineteenth century.
I speculate that those early settlers probably found the country just as uninteresting as I do today.
The modern road follows alongside a rail line which was probably sited because of the Trail as well. There must have been much more traffic in the past than there is today since I meet almost no one on the road. In fact there are a number of decaying roadside businesses that obviously closed long ago and which stand monument to the fact that at some time in this early 1900's this must have been a major auto and truck route with the required service stations, restaurants and motels along the way. All gone now and without the ties that being raised in a location create in people, they stand abandoned and along with on stragglers holding onto memories of this being a better place.
Google screenshot of abandoned US 350 business
One thing that does engage my interest is the telephone pole line that runs along the railroad tracks. The wires are only set about 8 or 9 feet, 2.5 - 3 Meters, above the ground. I can not imagine why they would have been placed so low. There are really no crossroads in the part of the county so I guess they do not have to be high enough for large vehicles to be able to pass below them. Maybe they were constructed long ago and the need to raise them has never developed as it has in other more developed parts of the county. In any case I can't think of a good reason why they are the way they are. When I subsequently mentioned this to my friend Sam Sanderson, he speculated that when the lines were originally placed, it would have been done all by hand without any power tools or vehicles and that it was probably just too difficult to get larger poles in place and erect them into necessarily deeper and hand-dug holes. I think he has hit the nail on the head. Once I arrive in La Junta I ask direction at the gas station to the best Mexican resturant in town which turns out to be Felicia's. The food lives up to it recommendation and I get to enjoy a wonderful lunch of tacos and enchiladas before getting back on the road for a short ride to the next town of Lamar where I decide to spend the night.
Day Eight 2 July, 2014 Lamar, Colorado to Newton, Kansas 306 miles
Today was another great day of riding, but for a very different reason. Yesterday was all about the excitement of exploring and discovery, today was about the sheer joy of riding a fist bike in the open air. The lower altitudes of the Great Plains meant that my breathing was less challenged and the resulting relaxation allowed me to once again get in touch with the pure fun of riding a good motorcycle. What a treat. The feeling puts you directly in touch with the pure feelings of your youth, un-reflected and un-analysied. Just fun.
The Big Ride 2014 Day Eight
When I have a day like this, I just let the mind wonder and muse on anything that might catch its attention. Farming, water towers, harvesters, tractors rain, oil cotton, corn, insects and sunlight are all fodder for contemplation. Mostly a gently musing but sometimes something different. A thought intrude that is then hard or nearly impossible to remove. It seems to me that you can control the direction of the mind in some respects but not others. I can almost always decide what I want to think about but it does not seem that I can firmly choose what not to think. Often thoughts come to consciousness, unbidden.
Day Eight Commentary
Unfortunately I have such a thought just outside Garden City Kansas and it stayed with me for much of the day and for many days following as well. One of the things you notice when riding the back roads rather than the Interstates is just how big trucks have become over the years. Everyone recalls the one-piece trucks for prohibition day movies when the gangsters where running bootleg whisky around. These were trucks with a human scale, something perhaps four or five times as big as a passenger car. But as the size of passenger cars has shrunk over the years, trucks have become behemouths, 10 or 15 or 20 times the size of a typical car and often pulling one or two or sometimes today, even three gigantic trailers. It is bad enough when you have to ride in proxcimity with these creatures on the Interstates, but when you meet them on the backroads such as US 50, they rush toward you head-on with a combined speed approaching 150 miles per hours. Unfortunately during one such encounter, I think, Ohmygosh, what would it fell like if I had a blown tire and was to be thrown into the part of the monster? Would you live long enough to know you were dying or would your horror blot out the inevitable end of your existence? Not the kind of thought you really want to contemplate every time you encunter a truck but one that I have yet to learn how to deny ideation. One good think is that trucks have become streamlined enough so that when you meet one screaming down at you on a two-lane road it is no longer quite like being battered into the sand by a breaking ocean wave but mostly just a gentle buffeting. A big improvement over the old days of riding, that's for sure. Approaching Garden City, Kansas reminds me of the last time I was there. Doing the math, I can hardly beleive it has been over 50 years ago. 50 years just seems like such a very long time. For most of my life, 50 years-olds were just that: old. It takes a moment for my consciousess to acknowledge that I myself am now old enough to have done and remembered things from 50 years ago. It was 1959 and I was with my Mother diving the family car from our home in East Lansing, Michigan where my father was a Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University to our new home in Denver. My Dad was flying out and would join us in Colorado. The car broke down just outside Garden City and we have to spend a couple of days there while it was being repaired. I do not remember anything about the town but at first recollection, I wonder why we had taken the Highway 50 route instead of the much more direct Interstate 70 that runs fairly directly from Kansas City to Denver. Then I realize that the Interstate were not yet built in the 1950's. Eisenhower had promoted the idea and got it approved but he was still President at the time and the construction had not been completed. Thinking of Eisenhower and the Interstate recalls the time I stopped at his museum and library and boyhood home in Abilene. As I remember, Abilene is located just off Interstate 70 so I won't be making that detour on this trip.
Garden City has some history with me but the real star of this section of the country is Dodge City. No one of my generation can have missed the television and movie references to this famous outlaw town. The place really came into its own in the last part of the ninetieth century when it was the westernmost terminus of the Nation's railroad lines. Cattle from the plains for hundreds of mile around were driven to Dodge City where they were either processed by local stockyards or shipped back East to feed a hungry and dynamically growing country. The place catered to the raw-bonded cowboys, cattle drivers and herd owners who were anxious to have a place to spend their new found money after weeks or months on the trail. The criminal element was also anxious to releive the drovers of their wealth and Dodge City had the reputation both as one of the wildest and most lawless places in the Old West. All of this was running though my mind when I suddenly came upon today's Dodge City reality. Stockyards. The rail lines may have spread throughout the country and into every corner but the stockyards that grew up and thrived in the 1880's are still operating today. They dramatically announce their presence on a gust of wind from the East which carries the distinctve smell of the excrement of thousands and thousands of animals. It is not by any means the worst smell on earth but it takes me by surprise after hundreds of miles on riding through the open West where the worst smell one is likely to encounter is a dead skunk in the middle of the road and the more common are of a fresh pine forest, a sagebrush meadow or the clean scent that comes right after a gentle rain. Dodge City had none of those. Fortunately the stockyards odors seem not to have penetrated into the middle of town and I stop on Main Street for a very nice Italian lunch.
Afterwards I need to speed through the stockyards on the city's East side and then it is a very enjoyable and quite relaxing ride to the Kansas town of Newton where I will be spending the night.
Day Nine 3 July, 2014 Newton, Kansas to Overland Park, KS (Kansas City) 172 miles
I am going to lead with he commentary once again. Another really enjoyable day of easy riding and just reveling in the sense of freedom that comes with a good bike in open country. I have been exceptionally lucky with the weather on most of the trip. Not only have I avoided rain for the most part but now that I am in the Midwest I was really worried about oppressive humidity and very high temperatures. When I get to Kansas City I have neither and the weather is actually better than I ever can remember it being in the few years that I lived here.
Day Nine Commentary
A very quick and short ride today. The only stop I made was when I reached the small town of Ottawa, Kansas. The name intrigued me since it was shared with the National Capital of Canada so many miles to the Northeast. What was surprising was that I did not think that there were any Indian Tribes that had an original range that was large enough to account for both towns being named after Indian groups and I was sure that would have been the etymology of the name. I subsequently learned that "Ottawa" is an Algonquin Native Language Group name for "traders" and I suspect that the local european settlers were attempting to name their towns after local Indian tribes but were simply confused about what the Native Peoples called themselves. I was still a bit surprised that the Algonquin group would be so widespread but on reflection realized that it was not that unusual. I had known that some Native Language families could cover very large areas and that some of the Athabaskan Tribes located in Northern Alberta had a language that was closely related and at least somewhat intelligible with that of the Navajo Tribes from the American Southwest, notablly Arizona. This makes sense if the migration route for humans into North America was across a Bearing Straits land bridge and then down the interior of the continent, leaving behind small populations in their wake.
The only thing that I thought was worth capturing in Ottawa was a sign advertising a local Tractor
Pull Event. I commented on Tractor Pulls in the next day's video diary from Kansas City. I stayed at the Marriott in Overland Park Kansas which was a bit of a splurge but I was upgraded to a very nice room by the front desk staff who was also a biker.
Day Ten 4 July, 2014 Kansas City Area 0 miles
Day 10 Commentary
I spent all day catching up with friends and family. It was great to see my cousin James Sommers who I last had met 49 years ago. Jim is the son of my Mother's sister who lived in the Kansas City area for many, many years and who we visited often when I was a boy. I also got to spend some time with my cousin Carol who was the daughter of another of Mom's sisters and who with her husband were long-time Kansas City residents. Jim brought his entire family with him so it was a treat to get acquainted with the entire clan. I got some snaps of that get together.
After a very enjoyable lunch, Jim invited me to stop by his home where he has some historical family items. He had some portraits of our joint ancestors and a wood cameo carving of our Grandmother, Lexie Ozell Bennett Gilliam. He had a likeness of our Great Grandfather Francis Asbury Garrett (Frank) Bennett over the mantle. FAG Bennett was born in Georgia in 1827 and was named after Francis Asbury, the first Methodist Bishop in the Americas. Frank's son, Alfonzo Dobson (Dob) Bennett, our Grandfather would donate the land from his farm for the construction of a small wooden Methodist church near Peace Valley, Missouri where my Mother grew up. This church would become known as Bennett's Chapel and is still standing but only infrequently used today.
Since it was the Fourth of July, many restaurants in the area were not open but I was just in time to take my cousin Carol and her husband, Jim Smith, a very successful retired businessman, to dinner at my all-time favorite place in Kansas City. This is Stroud's Restruant the "Home of the Pan Fried Chicken". Stroud's other famous phrase is, "We Choke Our Own Chickens", They sell tee-shirts with that printed on the back and on one visit I bought a number of them as gifts to friends. I wear mine fairly regularly but I suspect the friend's are used primarily for polishing the car or wiping up particularly nasty spills.
The next day I will be heading out of town and back on the bike. The high point of the visit was catching up with some dear friends and seeing family again. My visit did not make me want to move back to the Midwest, but it did temper my somewhat harsh judgements about the place. Having nearly perfect weather certainly helped. A high of 98° F and a low of 97° with humidity of 100% might have just confirmed my opinions.
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