Thursday, July 21, 2011

Northwest trip, day 17






Dateline Abilene KS: Today was mostly travel. We left at 6:45 AM MDT and headed east on CO-94, watching the rear view mirror to see how long we could still make out an outline of Pike's Peak - said goodbye about 80 miles out, which makes it well over 100 from the mountain. By Firstview, we were already 50 miles across the prairie from our last view. Took a little break at a nicely-done city park in Cheyenne Wells, and went on to Oakley.

Oakley's main attraction (other than a huge Buffalo Bill statue) is the Fick Museum. This museum has fossils, mostly of fish & mososaurs from back when Kansas was a sea of water rather than grass. Also paintings done by Mrs. Fick, many using the fossils she walked the prairie to pick up. These included millions of shark teeth (the shark picture is made up of teeth!). One of the eagles and the painting are done with shells, and the other eagle with rattlesnake rattles. Sandra escaped the wild(?) buffalo threatening her in the museum.

Ended up in Abilene at 104 F, where we found a great old restaurant where the original proprietor paddled Ike on his birthday. They were having a Third Thursday event downtown, and we drove around the Eisenhower library. We'll miss the carousel, but maybe another trip.

Today: 433 miles, 5243.2 for the trip. Tomorrow we head home!

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