June 30, 2010 - A day of driving, and history - and then some more driving. I posted my last blog after Tallgrass Prairie yesterday. We drove on that afternoon and did some birding at Cheyenne Bottoms, a world-class wetland area just west of the middle of the state. We were there at the wrong time of the day and the wrong time of the year (e.g., at the "right" time of year there are whooping cranes), but we still saw a ton of birds - scads of great blue herons, great and cattle egrets, lots of blue-winged teal, cormorants, coots, red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds, a northern oriole and maybe even a bittern (it was a long way off). Also a small moment of vindication for me, since I had insisted we bring the spotting scope (mainly to look for wolves in Yellowstone)—it was good to put it to good use on Day 4.

We also made use of the local informational brochures to find a campground that advertised it was shaded. It was in Great Bend, which was not quite as far as we had intended to go, but it worked out great. We parked beneath a grove of cottonwood trees, and had a nice stroke of luck. We were four blocks from a little waterpark that happened to be open till 9 on Tuesdays - and cost $2 per person. So we biked over there (yay on bringing four bikes), cooled off with pool and waterslides, then noticed the Dairy Queen right across the street. Excellent evening.

We got up this morning and headed to Fort Larned, a Santa Fe trail army outpost. This was an NPS National Historic Site, but free of charge, so no tallying of National Pass savings. There was a nice guided tour of all the buildings, which were built of a very cool sandstone and restored to resemble the fort as it was in 1848. They had setups of barracks, the infirmary, commissary, workshops, armory, and officers' quarters. Then we drove. And drove. We had half of Kansas to get across, and today it flattened out to what you think of when you think of Kansas (yesterday was at least rolling for much of the state). We saw lots of corn and wheat, and some cattle ranches.

We crossed into Colorado and headed to a second National Historic Site, Bent's Fort (National Pass saves $6!). Bent's fort was operation in the same time period as Larned, and also on the Santa Fe trail, but it was a privately held fort that was a trade center for the trapping industry, though it was appropriated by the Army briefly during the Mexican-American War. This fort was amazingly cool. Unlike Larned, which was built in standard Army architecture, Bent's was adobe. The original fort had been abandoned and fallen down but was rebuilt in 1979 as part of the NHS. So everything in it looked as it had been but was a modern re-creation, so you could wander through and touch everything. And while I am not and never will be a desert person, there is something about adobe architecture that makes me instantly at home and comfortable.

We left Bent's around 5:30 with half of Colorado to get through in order to be in place to go to Great Sand Dunes tomorrow morning. I pulled late driving shift , which means I got the 73 miles of Route 10 from La Junta to Walsenburg - perhaps the most desolate stretch of road I have ever been on. Kansas at least had farms and teeny towns. This had nothing. Sage scrub and cows with no readily apparent owners. Maybe 10 houses. No businesses. About 10 vehicles coming the opposite way, and not a single vehicle overtook us. And a steady crosswind that that scared the hell out of me.Good practice for Nevada, I suppose.

But we made it here OK, and found a nice little campground in Fort Garland, CO, which should put us less than an hour from Great Sand Dunes in the morning. We want to get up there early and hike before the sand heats up. Which reminds me: We drove to the Rocky Mountains! Holy crap!