I need to get on the road again and Angela, bless her heart, supports my little wanderings. This time I’m headed east to Poplar Bluff, MO and Bloomington, IN to visit family and friends. I’m traveling the back roads and small towns, interested to see what other parts of the country are doing in the time of the virus. It’s pretty easy to social distance on my 1984 BMW.
6 hours and about 250 miles into my day I take a little break for crackers, peanut butter and a soft drink in Lamar, CO. Angela and I spent two nights here back in 2016 when we were riding our bicycles to the Outer Banks. It’s been a beautiful day with mostly light traffic and the motorcycle and I are getting reacquainted.
About 300 miles behind me and I finally break through the Colorado state border into Kansas! By the way “ad astra per aspera” is Latin for “through hardship to the stars”. Nothing great comes easy is what kept the pioneers and settlers going, and sometimes me too.
I pull into historic Dodge City around 5:30. After checking in I start to explore the town and see if I can find a restaurant where I can sit and eat inside again just like the good old days and the “I Don’t Care Family Restaurant and Sports Bar” beckons me.
Bingo!! With about half the chairs removed from the bar I find a spacious seat by the beer taps and order a tasty Boulevard Wheat beer and one of my favorite dishes, chicken fried steak. I found very few people wearing masks so far on my trip and in the case of the restaurant, just the staff. I had a nice chat with some of the old timers about historic Dodge City on the other side of the bar while I enjoyed my supper. It was also nice to be sitting on something that didn’t vibrate for a change.
I attempted to walk off my dinner and explore the town. The Boot Hill Distillery sits atop the real Boot Hill Cemetary where 22 men and one woman were buried. Good news is they relocated the bodies before they built this building.
And here’s the man that put some of those men in Boot Hill, Wyatt Earp. Born in 1840 he was brought to Dodge City in 1872, about the time the railroad arrived in the heyday of Dodge City and the beginning of the end of the Wild West. Wyatt went on to bring order to other cities and died in 1921.
Back to present day in Dodge City where anyone who wants a test can get a test in 15 minutes at the Xpress Wellness, bringing order to the chaos just like Wyatt did only with a nasal swab instead of a six shooter.
A relic of the past, not me silly, but a steam engine from the Atchinson, Topeka and Sante Fe railway that sits right off of US 50 in front of the Boot Hill museum (still closed). It’s been a great day on the road again.
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