Up a bit earlier today and exit Salida, Colo. (Hey! A bilingual pun!) After about 90 minutes we leave behind the mountains. Into Eastern Colorado, the one tourists don’t expect. Levelling out around 4500 feet, we enter the most western ends of the Great Plains.
We did see a nother few 12,000 footers on the way out.
At the border we see an abandoned gas station that sold gas to the Dust Bowl families. Our birds today were thin. Western Meadowlarks, Common Grackles, Collared Doves, a Kestrel. Ubiquitious Ravens. Red-Winged Blackbirds, and either Shiny Blackbirds or Bronzed Cowbirds, couldn’t tell. A few sparrows, but no ID.
We had lunch with fellow Kossack GMFord and her doughter in law, Mayor Jeffri Pruyn of La Junta, Colorado. Both were wonderful.
The mayor flipped a long held (decades) mayorship red to blue, and she looks very progressive fighting a bad power deal with a coal company, working on rebirthing the center district of La Junta, and working with the hispanic population to include them in community work and voting. We talked about how successful CO was in flipping red seats to blue at all levels. Good luck to them. GMFord was super for contacting us along the road and giving us a welcome in town. We had lunch at Lucy’s, a very authentic Mexican trailer restauraunt. I hope we can meet many more Kossacks along the road, and this means you.
As for sights, we saw a lot of farms, some doing well, some in bad shape. Many grain towers, a coal train at least a mile long in Kansas. Several pass every day. Coal plants are still here, but we also saw a huge transshipment point for windmill blades, towers and generators in Garden City. Things are happening in Kansas, but there is obious poverty and decline on many farms.
Garden City was vey nice, we had a good meal and the Flat Mountain Brewery. The town was about 25,000, clean, organized and looked to be a nice place. Many other places along the route have been on tough times for decades. I found this book Alienated America, to be interesting. Aliented America .
So a lot of level today, some really nice people. I did have one What’s Wrong With Kansas moment. Looking for a hotel, I found a lobby full of evangelical tracts, and a newspaper, chock full of anti-choice and abortion screed. a distaste to an otherwise great day.
348 Miles today. Tomorrow, birding and arrival in Kansas City.