We left Denver in Colorful Colorado about 9am to head East. We didn’t have any plans for this leg of the trip, so relied upon my 1998 State Farm Road Atlas to point out the sights along I-70. The only one that sounded interesting between Denver and Kansas was the Kit Carson County Carousel.

Kit Carson was a colorful frontiersman who was a busy with a whole range of Wild-West taming, Civil Warring, and pioneering over a 20+ year career. Building carousels wasn’t one of the things he did, but there’s one sitting in the county fair grounds that I think he’d be proud of. The Carousel has 46 stationary, fancifully carved animals, an original brass organ, and several canvas paintings depicting animals, landscapes, and fairy-tale scenes. Some of the horses have real horse-hair tails and the antelope have actual horns. It reaches a speed of 12mph. I can’t believe they only charge twenty five cents to ride this thing. Awesome. Best money I’ve spent on this trip.

We made a command decision to cover as much of Kansas as possible today, but that didn’t stop us from making a few stops along the way. The most notable was Goodland, Kansas. They have the High Plains Museum here, and apparently it’s not well attended because the docent had to turn the lights on for us. This museum houses information on the rain maker industry that sprung up to bilk farmers during the dust bowl years. Amazing. They also have the first helicopter built in the country. It’s a whirligig contraption that is wonderful to behold but would scare the shit out of me if I had to ride the thing.

We chatted with the docent who told us that although Goodland does have an annual sunflower festival in August, it was too early for them to be in full bloom. I didn’t notice any actual sunflower fields in the immediate town environs. Like I mentioned before, they have an 80′ reproduction of Van Gogh’s sunflowers on an easel in the parking lot just West of the museum. Part of me wishes I had been part of the original committee that commissioned that hot mess. It’s a fine example of Americana.

We drove through Hays to see the Fort and dinosaur museum (thanks for the rec, Bill!), but things were closed up by the time we rolled into town. We took it as a sign and decided to make a mad dash for Missouri.

A note about Kansas rest stops: according to the employees, you can camp overnight for free for one night at all the rest stops along the Interstate. While this shouldn’t be a preferred choice, it’s a nice last-ditch option. I wish California were half as generous with both rest stops and camping.

We’re still driving. It’s 9:14pm and we’ve traveled 5915.2 miles