With heat advisories still in effect, I thought we should again try to seek help from a higher power, perhaps Kansas’ favorite son. So Sage paid homage to Dwight D. Eisenhower, thankfully not scatalogically this time, as the grounds of his home, museum, library, and grave in Abilene were too pristine to sully.
As it turned out, this birthplace visit set a repetitive tone for the day. Nearly every city’s exit across Kansas had a brown sign promoting it as the “home of” someone famous, including senators Bob Dole and Arlen Specter in Russell and astronauts Joe Engle and Steven Hawley in Chapman and Salina, respectively. The state seemed to be compensating for an inferiority complex, breaking up the tedium of even its terrain – with duplicative windmills.
I had to listen to multiple podcasts to keep from zoning out as I crossed the state. Near the western border the brown signs sensed my hypnotic state and stopped trying to tempt me with specifics, advertising simply “points of interest,” one of which was a silo tower from which you supposedly could view six states. I didn’t stop to see the six states; instead, I settled for spotting the same masterful airbrushing on this motor home FOUR times.
The scenery didn’t change much at first as I crept into Colorado, but I got a second wind from my mission to track down Wynkopp Brewery in Denver. Beams from above shone upon the free parking space in front of the downtown microbrewery, illuminating the path to my reward for surviving nearly six hours of monotony: a six-pack of Silverback Pale Ale.
To prepare for the beer in the cooler, I needed some food in my belly, so I swung by Tocabe, kind of an Native American version of Chipotle, in the suburbs. I scarfed down my open-faced, fry-bread taco with shredded bison and Osage hominy salsa at Rocky Mountain Lake Park, so I could quickly get to a place where I could crack open a can.
Once again, the heavens broke open to guide me to a more-than-suitable beer garden: my leafy site near Echo Lake in Arapaho National Forest, where for the first time I enjoyed fellow campers, including a family playing “Red Light, Green Light,” a boy named Keegan who told me all about his family’s dogs, and a lesbian couple who also broke out some brewskis.
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