A Caravan Tour of the United States - Part Two
Created | Updated Apr 7, 2009
Wichita Museum of Art - Wichita, Kansas
There are 16 museums in Wichita listed in the Microsoft Streets and Trips software. We have a day to look around so I scribble the names and addresses of eight of these and we head downtown.
First stop: The Museum of art...a knock-out. I enjoyed it more than the day we spent in the Louvre.
I took about 75 pictures. They made me sign an agreement not to use flash, not to sell the pictures or take pictures of art on loan to the museum. They had a great collection of Inuit sculpture on loan.
It's a wonderful place in a lovely setting on the river. One special feature is a very whimsical blown glass chandelier.
These mid-west cities are full of surprises. We move on to the Coleman Camping Gear Museum and Factory Outlet... Then see the World Treasures Museum. It's full of dinosaurs, pieces of the Berlin Wall, minerals, laughing Buddhas, war stories and other treasures
MT Liggett – Kansas Highway Artist - Mullinville, Kansas
We're cruising highway 400 West on the way to Dodge City. Skynards's 'Free Bird' is coming in clear on a Wichita FM station. We come around the curve and see a half-mile of tightly packed spinning windmills, whirligigs, and political caricatures made of abandoned farm equipment, old cars and railroad parts. Mrs Phred swerves the RV to the shoulder and I grab the camera.
Liggett is 73 years old and completely outrageous. He's been writing an insanely clever political blog in solid steel for at least 20 years.
'Evolution is wrong,' one display reads, 'Only a miracle from the Allmighty could have created the moronic dumb asses on the Kansas State Board of Education.' Mrs Phred points out an 'intelligent design' totem with the words upside down. The Kansas Board objected to teaching evolution in 2005.
Hillary Clinton is, 'Our Jack-Booted Eva Braun'; Mr and Mrs Clinton caricatures are labelled 'Pothead' and 'Porkadolf'. Mrs Clinton is done up with swastikas.
Liggett has one work that equates Waco with Auschwitz. Janet Reno has her head stuffed up her butt. A right wing Republican has his thumb in the same position. Haliburton is represented by a dark pig's head.
It's tough to figure out Liggett's political position. He seems equally angry about everything and everyone, especially politicians. We passed a town destroyed by a tornado a few miles back. Liggett devotes quite a few displays to FEMA. 'Tornados blow, FEMA sucks!' he proclaims.
Lots of the 'totems' are devoted to MT's old girlfriends, who he has immortalized in junk. You have to wonder about his relationships with neighbors. My money says he doesn't much care about what other people think.
Good Reasons to Get Out of Dodge - Dodge City, Kansas
We spent yesterday looking at Dodge City in Kansas. The main employer seems to be Cargill Foods. They truck in 10,000 head of cattle a day to be slaughtered and processed. There are massive cattle concentration camps everywhere where cattle are packed in feedlots to fatten up amid gigantic piles of stinking black dung.
Dodge is a poor, sad, shabby place now. The saloons and bawdy houses are gone. The buffalo hunters, steely-eyed lawmen, gamblers and cattle drive cowboys are only a memory. The old Front Street stores and saloons burned down long ago.
We visited the Boot Hill Museum. The old grave sites have been preserved. It's the kind of place you go to see to be sure you haven't missed anything. The answer is no. That's about it for Dodge.
Butt-Boarding in America - Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado
We're not in Kansas any more. We're at 8200 feet in the middle of a huge high valley surrounded by the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. There are four nearby mountains that exceed 14,000 feet.
The wind outside is gusting to about 50 mph. We're parked next to 30 square miles of 700-foot tall sand dunes. It's a recipe for a sandstorm. Turns out that sandstorm sunsets are nothing like the lovely pollution-inspired sunsets of coastal Florida. They are more of a two-tone blue over brown.
We invented a new sport yesterday while hiking the dunes. We call it butt-boarding. It's marginally more fun and much less controversial than water-boarding. You just climb up on a 700 foot dune and slide down.
It's tough to climb up a 700 foot sand dune at 8,200 feet. You breathe heavily. Sand gets in your sneakers. You think Lawrence of Arabia. You think camels. You think Flight of the Phoenix. You start singing...
All day I've faced a barren waste
Without the taste of water, cool water
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry
And souls that cry for water
Cool, clear, water
The Oldest City - Taos, New Mexico
Today we got up early and went down to Taos in New Mexico on the edge of the Taos Indian Reservation.. The most interesting thing we saw was the Taos Pueblo. The Pueblo has been continuously inhabited for 1,000 to 1,200 years. It's hard to exactly date the construction. Regardless, it's the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America.
The buildings are divided by the Red Willow Creek, which flows down from the sacred Blue Lake in the mountains to the East. Only members of the community are allowed into the Reservation area that includes the sacred lake. The only modern addition to these buildings is blue doorways. The original adobe structures were entered through holes in the roof. Ladders were pulled up when invaders appeared.
The Taos Indians closely guard their language and traditions. They revolted against Spanish rule in 1680 and remained free for about 30 years. In 1847 they attempted to overthrow the US Government and managed to kill the first governor of New Mexico, Charles Bent. Retribution was swift.
We had lunch in the Doc Martin's Restaurant near the Taos Plaza. We both ordered coffee and Lamb Wraps.
Peacocks Can't Fly Above 9,000 Feet - Curecanti National Recreation Area, Colorado
The altitude here is 9,300 feet. It started to snow just after we arrived. The temperature rises to about 35° F during the day and drops to around 15° F at night.
The camp grounds are officially closed but you can camp in some of them if you wish. We found one to move to today with a lovely view of a lake and mountains. The picnic tables are buried in snow, but they've plowed the road.
The Gunnison river loses more elevation in 48 miles than the Mississippi loses in 1500. It used to slam though the canyon at the rate of 12,000 cubic feet a second in spring with 3 million horsepower. This allowed the river to carve an extremely steep canyon though very hard rock at a depth of nearly 3,000 feet.
The upper portions of the river now have three dams which created high mountain lakes stocked with many species of trout, Dolly Varden and salmon. The lake region is administered by the National Park Service and is called the Curecanti National Recreation Area.
The most dramatic 14-mile stretch of the river is a National Park: The Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We talked to two park rangers yesterday who were shovelling snow off an observation overlook. They told us that normally the trails would have been open two weeks ago, but the snowfall this year was 150% of normal.
The camp ground cat at the last place was very friendly. It was furry and fat and seemed to live outdoors with the coyotes. It eats a breakfast of salmon salad (salmon, eggs, onions and mayonnaise). It seemed to want to leave with us but Mrs Phred and I decided against acquiring a companion.
We can go on any of the trails, they say, with snowshoes. Mrs Phred and I have never tried snowshoes. We both grew up in Florida. I ask if snowshoes can be rented locally and get the name a sporting goods store in Montrose
The Million Dollar Highway - From Ouray to Durango - Colorado
The thermometer reads 15°s F this morning at dawn. The camp ground is empty and silent except for us and several hundred birds chirping about spring. The piles of snow are beating a slow retreat.
The hike we took yesterday was an odd mix of deep snow and slippery, gluey mud. We went up a trail called 'The Pinnacles' for about an hour before turning back. Sometimes, we would break though the snow crust and sink to our knees. Sometimes, our boots would pick up several pounds of mud where the snow had melted. One of the things to discuss on a hike is the tracks and the scat. We saw lots of deer sign and a few bear tracks. This is the time that the bears are coming out of hibernation with new cubs, looking for breakfast.
I learned that last year they took out a 56 pound lake trout from the frozen lake where we are camped . The fishing here is reported to be the best in Colorado. Soon they will be releasing several million eleven-inch sockeye salmon from the upriver hatchery. That explains the giant trout. Trout are very aggressive eaters and love little fish. We made a special trip to Gunnison to buy a fishing license. The sporting goods store was a rat's nest of fishing tackle, deer antlers and snowshoes. A good pair of snowshoes goes for $125. I fished for about an hour and didn't catch anything. I scraped up some loose dirt and buried two boxes of worms in the ground and added a little water. They won the worm lottery...never give up.
We moved today. We drove from Gunnison to Montrose, then down through Ouray to Durango. Rand McNally thinks the winding 75 miles from Ouray to Durango is the best drive in Colorado.
The high mountain passes go up to 12,000 feet. It's good to be back to 6,000 feet after a week at 10,000 or more. The air that we breathe is 21 percent oxygen. However, the amount of oxygen available for your lungs is a factor of partial pressure of oxygen and is measured in torr. As altitude increases, the available oxygen pressure in torr decreases.
The percentage of oxygen in the air is always 21 percent no matter how high you go, but it's 21 percent of a smaller total air pressure. At sea level the partial pressure of oxygen is 21 percent of 760 torr, while at 10,000 feet it is 21 percent of only 199 torr. The older you get, the more susceptible you are to lack of oxygen at altitude. In the Air Force, we had to strap on our masks for anything over 8,000 feet. Rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, headaches and decreased mental acuity are a few of the early symptoms. Death is the last, most serious effect. I lost consciousness in about a minute at 23,000 feet in the altitude chamber...what a nice way to go...Euphoria, followed by nothing. They should use these on death row.
We want to see the ruins at Mesa Verde tomorrow and maybe take a hike or two. It might take a couple of days to explore the Canyons of the Ancients. There are over 6,000 ancient pueblos up on the desert mesas. After that, there is a trading post in the desert we want to see. It's over in the 'four corners' area on the Ute reservation in the high desert.
