We spent yesterday exploring cowboy country. Back in the years following the Civil War, western Kansas was the Wild West, and it was here that some of the best known characters of the time made names for themselves.

Meade, Kansas, where we are staying at the city park’s free “Tourist Camp” is the home of the Dalton Gang Hideout, complete with an escape tunnel that led from the outlaw gang’s sister’s house to a barn down the hill.  Marc Ferguson, manager of the Hideout, had invited us to come by and check it out.

Marc is a great storyteller, and he gave us a brief history of the Dalton brothers and their fall from grace, starting out as Deputy U.S. Marshal’s and ending up shot down in the streets of Coffeyville, Kansas in a bank robbery gone bad.

We were impressed with the tunnel, and displays in the neat little museum upstairs of the gift shop, which included everything from old guns and barbed wire to a stuffed two-headed calf.

We left the bus in Meade and drove the van about 40 miles to Dodge City, which was known as the Queen of the Cow Towns and one of the wickedest towns on earth. It was here that cattle drives from Texas reached trail’s end, and an army of saloon keepers, card sharks, shady ladies, and outlaws waited to separate the hardworking Texas cowboys from their pay.

Killings were routine business in old Dodge City, and it took hard lawmen like Bill Tilghman, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson to bring peace. Plenty of outlaws and wild cowboys found their final resting place at Boot Hill, and the legends have only grown over the years.

Today Dodge City is a friendly town of some 25,000 people, and still makes its living off the cattle industry. Two large meat packing plants are the main employers, though tourism plays an important role in the local economy.

Jan Stevens, director of the Dodge City Convention and Visitors Bureau, met us and took us to lunch, while she gave us a very good overview of the town’s history and how things are today. We deal with a lot of public relations and media representatives in our work, and I have to tell you, if they were all half as good as Jan, we’d have an easy job. She spent a long time with us, answered all of our questions, gave us a ton of excellent reference material, and then arranged a tour of Boot Hill and the re-created Front Street, once the centerpiece of the wild cow town.

Jan also arranged for local historian Charlie Meade to give us a walking tour of Dodge City, which included all of the historically important places, as well as this neat statue of Wyatt Earp.

Charlie is a real treasure, and it was wonderful to spend the afternoon with him. A retired Deputy Marshal, and recently appointed as a Special Deputy United States Marshal, at 74 years young, Charlie is a walking encyclopedia of Old West history and lore.

We were great friends by the end of our time together, and Miss Terry posed for a picture with our new pal. Charlie was only too happy to do so, saying he never passes up an opportunity to get close to a pretty lady. I can’t say that I blame him.

Thought For The Day – I suffer occasional delusions of adequacy.

We spent Wednesday night dry camping in the designated RV parking area at the Route 66 Casino, and thought we might have a problem with our Onan 5500 generator.

We fired it up to run our rooftop air conditioner and all was going along fine, with the generator putting out 123 volts according to the meter on our Progressive Industries EMS system. Suddenly the voltage dropped to 104 volts and the EMS cut out, as it is designed to do in low voltage situations. We turned off the air conditioner and the reading was still 104 volts. With the EMS not engaged, which allows no power to come through, and thus no load on the genset, we were still reading 104 volts.

I let the generator sit for about an hour and fired it up, and it was putting out 123 volts again. But soon it did the same thing, dropping to 104 volts and staying. The AC was not on this time, and all we were using was 9 amps according to the EMS. We had last used the genset about three weeks ago and it was working fine then.

Yesterday morning we left the casino about 9:30 a.m., after waiting for rush hour traffic in Albuquerque to calm down, and headed east on Interstate 40. I think rush hour is actually 24/7 in Albuquerque, and construction zones with lane closures are just a fact of life there, but we managed to thread our way through it all and began to long uphill climb out of the valley. We were in the right hand lane, radiator misters going and moving slow, but we made it okay.

Terry fired the generator up again and we ran the rooftop air conditioner for about four hours with no problems, so I guess the gremlins who were causing problems the night before were taking the day off.

We traveled 190 miles to Tucumcari, where we left the interstate and took U.S. Highway 54 northeast. Add the depressing little town of Logan, New Mexico to your list of places to avoid. There were signs posted  all along the highway through the rundown downtown (what there is of it) saying “No Overnight Parking” and one sad looking RV park next to the railroad tracks. As we were coming into town a group of about nine young men were in an altercation alongside the road that looked like it was going to get violent very quickly.

We crossed into Texas, and tried to hold our breath as we drove past the huge cattle feeding operations near Dalhart. I like the aroma of beef sizzling on the grill a lot more than I do when it’s on the hoof in the muck.

I was looking forward to passing through Hooker, Oklahoma, home of the Hooker Horny Toads ball team. The last time we visited Hooker, I got a giggle out of the sign in front of a building identified as the Hooker Chamber of Commerce. I had no idea they were that organized!

There was a lot of road construction in Hooker, and one sign I really wanted to stop and get a picture of said “We’re building a better Hooker for you” but there was no place to pull over. I wonder if they take custom orders…..?

Before long we crossed into Kansas at Liberal, home of the fantastic Mid-America Air Museum, which we did a feature on a few years ago. Liberal is also home of the Dorothy’s House Museum and an annual Wizard of Oz celebration.

I knew that one of my ex-wives was back in Arizona, but that left one still unaccounted for, so I kept a sharp eye out for witches until we were out of town. One can’t be too careful.

A half hour or so after we left Liberal, we came to Meade, home of the Dalton Gang Hideout, which we will visit tomorrow. We are parked for the night in the Meade city park, which allows free RV parking. There are a few water bibs scattered about, and the park has a dump station. We are sharing the park with a couple from South Dakota in a small fifth wheel, who stopped by to say hello, and a tiny Toyota camper from California.

We covered 456 miles yesterday, which was more than we had planned to drive, but it was a good day, the bus was running smooth, and traffic was light, so we just kept on rolling. It’s good to be back on the road again!

Thought For The Day – No one ever achieved worthwhile success who did not find themselves with at least one foot hanging over the brink of failure.

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