Dodge City, Kansas

I didn’t get on an interstate for pretty much three days. It was a great way to see the country but at night it tends to get kind of scary. Wednesday night I saw stars as clear as I had seen them in New Mexico. I turned off the lights and I couldn’t see anything a foot in front of me. I stared up for a long as I could before thinking a creppy ghost prospector was going to put his ax in my head. The Old West. “Get out of Dodge.” So you can get a beer at the saloon. It is a Bud Light and that didn’t feel very Old West but it is still a beer and the bartender let me carry it around the tour. To the school. To the church. To the cemetery. The tour was pretty cool. It was a good bit about how we absolutely screwed the Indians over for manifest destiny which was heartbreaking. There was an original old school jail cell and I got to go in it and pretend I was a bad ass. Bonnie at the gift shop told me all about her pretty granddaughter who was at the top of her class and wanted to be a doctor. Then she sold me some delicious chocolate pecan fudge. This was a good hour long visit.

Also…the Old West has an Applebees and a Pizza Hut Wing Street next door. The good ole days are long past.

On the way out of Dodge, I stopped at a Flying J trucker stop and took a shower. No joke - the showers there were nicer and cleaner than the one in my apartment in Grundy. It was so nice. It was basically a full bathroom with a keypad lock and dead bolt. I felt very comfortable and like I wasn’t taking a shower at a gas station. Turned Pandora to the Azure Ray station on my Droid and enjoyed the hot water and high pressure. Then I dried off, filled up my car and headed to Wichita.