2022 Aug 19 – Kansas City, MO to Dodge City, KS – Kelly

State Count – 9

This was one of our longest drives at around 6 hours, but the diversity of the scenery made it fly by… oh wait, it was flat-flat-flat and about 200 miles without a town. Even with the pretty, big sky, we thought it felt endless, and we could only imagine how it must have felt to the early settlers who rolled along in wagon trains at 10 miles per day. Respect! When we hit Dodge City our spirits were high – I love the old west! – and as we crested a rare hill, there was a really cool life-size metal silhouette. sculpture of cowboys on horseback overlooking the town. Yeehaw! But, I’m sad to say, that was the highlight of this little town. Like lots of old west boomtowns, this one’s heyday seems to have passed. The charming old part of town was tired and run down although you could see what it once was. Due to the dog, we skipped the small, well-kept museum that looked like it might have been interesting. The quasi-highlight was an actual, giant steel steam engine that you could climb up in. It was massive, and had travelled over 1 million miles in the late 1800s transporting cattle driven up from Texas (nearly 5 million in a 10 year period!) to the markets back east.

Sculpture heading into Dodge