Yesterday we picked up where we left off, traveling about 700 miles by 5pm. About 90% of our drive was through Kansas, and if you’re not the curious sort, that drive can get quite boring. However, if you have an inquisitive mind, then it can be quite interesting. Mom spent a good deal of the drive looking up facts and fighting her contacts to do so (at one point she exclaimed, “I think my eyes are quitting on me.”).
Our conversations ranged from the differences in milo and sorghum, what constitutes a shelter belt versus a wind break, which state has the most tornadoes on average per year (it’s Oklahoma), what was Dorothy Gale’s hometown (Liberal, KS), and where in the world can we see buffalo. And one thing that gave me a little bit of giddy pleasure was saying, “Well, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore,” upon entering Colorado.
The Kansas landscape is a flat, bucolic one, full of fields of milo, wheat, soybean, corn, wind turbines, and small oil rigs. The state’s nickname is the sunflower state, but I think we saw more wind turbines than sunflowers. Wind power accounts for something like 20-25% of the state’s energy. The wind turbines were quite a majestic sight, and Mom remarked that they looked like something that came out of “Project 52.”
Now, my mother is a very intelligent woman, but she has the habit of saying things and words that aren’t quite right, which makes for some colorful conversation. If you know her, it’s not hard to decipher what she’s saying, and “Project 52” was her reference to Area 51. I’m also pretty sure I heard her say that the UFO’s, in the infamous Area 51 conspiracy theory, were stored in “Doswell,” not Roswell. Maybe she just knows something we all don’t. Maybe Project 52 was a little known UFO landing in Doswell, VA, in which aliens decided to visit Kings Dominion and ride the Rebel Yell backwards. No one will ever know what secrets lie in the mind of Dawn Goolsby.
Anyway, the eastern part of Colorado is very similar to Kansas and it was there we started seeing fields of sunflowers, both the large and dwarf varieties. The fields of dwarf sunflowers have been one of my favorite sights thus far, their yellow heads stretched out, for what seemed like miles, peering toward the sun
In Denver, we stopped by Glazed and Confused, a donut shop I had visited twice while in the Denver area for 7s Nationals and the Atavus Academy tournament. The owner, who had asked myself and two of my teammates, on our first visit, “What are you guys up to today? Out killing people?” (and then said that we “just had that look”), recognized me and told us to wait on hitting Pike’s Peak, because it had snowed up there the day before. We thanked him and then headed out to Colorado Springs, where we got a bit lost.
Getting lost actually turned out to be our collective favorite part of the day. We wound up heading up Cheyenne Mountain and then stopping for a little hike at sunset. The enormous blood-orange rocks and evergreen trees loomed over us as we followed a trail that snaked down the mountain alongside a creek. Speaking of snakes, Mom kept warning us to look out for rattlesnakes, and I think she got herself a little worked up about it and was a little skittish on our little hike. Half-way into it, she let out a guttural holler when her phone’s GPS started giving directions. That made for a good laugh to wind down our day.
Stay tuned for Day Four’s adventures, which include a drive up Pike’s Peak and discovering the mystery of Mom’s eye malfunction.
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