The Plains

We made it to Colorado Springs tonight. The weather is incredible. Much better than the awful rain we'd been having.

In western Kansas today we saw signs posted for something called Castle Rock that we were intrigued by. You must understand that there's very little else that's real intriguing about Kansas, so it really could have been almost anything that we would have volunteered to sidetrack for. But at any rate, we drove off the main road on a search for some rock. We immediately went from nowheresville to REALLY nowheresville. We were riding along this terribly rocky dirt road with nothing in front of us. I was beginning to get very skeptical about anything interesting ahead. However, we pressed on and finally found additional signs to Castle Rock. As we drove closer, it looked so completely lame that we were truly broken-hearted at how many miles we had driven toward something so uncool. But when we got to the top and looked over, it was amazing! In the middle of these flat flat plains, these strange rock structures stick out of the middle of nowhere. They're so strange looking. There's one grouping that's actually called Castle Rock, but the rest is similar formations that I actually found even more fascinating than Castle Rock. It reminded us of the Badlands in South Dakota. I know the Badlands at some point in history was ocean floor. So, I imagine it's the same case with these. It looks totally bizarre and out of place though.

As we were leaving Kansas, we went in search of an 8,000 pound prairie dog we'd seen on a billboard. No luck, but a valiant effort nonetheless. Might have been the second most exciting thing in Kansas!

Then we finally made our way into Colorado via route 94. We saw almost zero other vehicles and the scenery was exactly the same for miles and miles and miles... Impressive nonetheless, but...the same. After the first twenty miles, you get the idea. It wasn't until we had our first glance of mountains that we had a ray of hope. And they were HUGE! We were shooting pictures out the window every chance we got. We're staying at a KOA in Fountain, CO tonight. We'll explore the mountains a bit tomorrow I think.