It's another sunny autumn morning in Iowa. After a delicious breakfast with my gracious hosts in Cedar Falls, I climb into my GMC and hit the road - through Cedar Falls and Waterloo to U.S. 20 west across central Iowa.
As I roll past ripened corn and bean fields, I turn on NPR. Even on the policy-oriented radio shows, the Monday night officiating fiasco is in focus. We can be sure that as the playoff schedule develops, there will be a lot of "what ifs."
Heading west, I cross over I-35 that connects the Twin Cities and Des Moines. Instead of heading south on the interstate, I continue west on US 20; it's a good road and lightly traveled. At Fort Dodge, I turn south on lesser-traveled roads, and eventually cross I-80, the east-west route that connects Des Moines to Omaha. I continue winding my way south and west amidst the corn and bean fields - some of the cornfields are being harvested down here.
Then its west to the broad, fertile Missouri Valley flood plain - the rich soil having been deposited by centuries of Missouri River floods. Across the river into Nebraska, the sky is still sunny, but with an autumn haze in late afternoon.
In Nebraska, it's south on U.S. 75 to Auburn, then west on US 136 across gently rolling hills to Beatrice, a nice town about the size of Monroe. Across more gently rolling hills to Hebron, I turn south toward Kansas. As I cross the Nebraska-Kansas line at sunset and look to the west, there is a combine unloading corn into a wagon. Looking into the sun on the horizon, all I can see is the silhouette of the combine and wagon, black amidst a cloud of dust against the red sky of the setting sun. It's a scene fitting of a post card, or perhaps a commercial singing the praises of midwestern agriculture. Art and artistry is where you find it.
It's dark as I hit U.S. 36 in Kansas and turn west. I stop at the small town of Norton for the night. Next morning the temperature is in the low 50s with gray clouds overhead, and intermittent drizzle as I head west. I stop at another small town, Oberlin, for breakfast. Too late - probably a good thing - I spot some huge, delicious looking cinnamon rolls. The waitress tells me that travelers from the east on their way to Denver often make a special effort to stop for these cinnamon rolls. I'll keep that in mind, as I'm sure my travels will someday take me this way again.
Farther west, with clouds over head I cross into Colorado and turn south on U.S. 385, the High Plains Highway. Last June, as I was traveling north on this same road, it was sunny, the ripening wheat a rich gold against bright blue skies. But today it is just brownish gray stubbles against gray skies. Some of the fields have already been cultivated and planted with the 2013 winter wheat crop.
In my narration of last June, one of my astute readers caught an error. I had incorrectly called U.S. 385 the "Great Plains Highway" instead of the "High Plains Highway." My reader was right - the Great Plains Highway is U.S. 81, the north-south highway through central Nebraska, Kansas, and down to Oklahoma City. U.S. 81 is close to the 99th meridian that roughly separates the midwestern Corn Belt from the Great Plains Wheat Belt.
South on the High Plains Highway, along the eastern edge of Colorado, it's a mixture of wheat, some irrigated corn, and dry range land, mostly flat, but some slight hills, to Granada and the Arkansas River. Then it's west along the river and the route of the Old Santa Fe Trail, through Lamar, Las Animas, to La Junta. From there, the old Santa Fe Trail veers southwest to Trinidad, and eventually to Santa Fe. But I take state Route 10 west to Walsenburg.
Toward Walsenburg the elevation rises perceptibly and the front range of the Rockies first appears on the western horizon. That stretch reminds me of Cole Porter's composition, "Don't Fence Me In." That nostalgic song features a lone rider who wants to straddle his old saddle under western skies, and ride to the ridge where the west commences, and wants to "wander over yonder till I see the mountains rise." Seeing the mountains rise does indeed stir the imagination.
There are, generally speaking, three Colorados: The approximately half of the state that is on the western edge of the Great Plains; the urbanized eastern front of the Rockies from Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, to Pueblo; and the mountain west. U.S. 160 from Walsenburg takes one over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Amidst alternate sunshine and brief showers, I descend to the broad San Luis Valley. The word "descend" is deceptive in that although one descends into the valley, it is approximately 7500 feet in elevation.
I cross the valley, now bathed in autumn sunshine, to Alamosa, billed as the "land of the cool sun," and the Rio Grande, which rises in the eastern slope of the San Juan Mountains west of Alamosa. My destination is Pagosa Springs. My friend, Elmer Schettler, has arranged for us to have dinner the next night with Fred Harman Jr., son of rancher and cowboy artist, the late Fred Harman, who created movie and comic book heroes of the 1940s, Red Ryder and Little Beaver.
It's late afternoon with clear skies. I could easily enough make it over Wolf Creek Pass to Pagosa Springs. But why rush? I would be heading into the sun. Maybe better to wait till morning and take a leisurely trip across with the sun at my back.
That turned out to be a good decision.
Next week: Revisiting Red Ryder country.
-John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
As I roll past ripened corn and bean fields, I turn on NPR. Even on the policy-oriented radio shows, the Monday night officiating fiasco is in focus. We can be sure that as the playoff schedule develops, there will be a lot of "what ifs."
Heading west, I cross over I-35 that connects the Twin Cities and Des Moines. Instead of heading south on the interstate, I continue west on US 20; it's a good road and lightly traveled. At Fort Dodge, I turn south on lesser-traveled roads, and eventually cross I-80, the east-west route that connects Des Moines to Omaha. I continue winding my way south and west amidst the corn and bean fields - some of the cornfields are being harvested down here.
Then its west to the broad, fertile Missouri Valley flood plain - the rich soil having been deposited by centuries of Missouri River floods. Across the river into Nebraska, the sky is still sunny, but with an autumn haze in late afternoon.
In Nebraska, it's south on U.S. 75 to Auburn, then west on US 136 across gently rolling hills to Beatrice, a nice town about the size of Monroe. Across more gently rolling hills to Hebron, I turn south toward Kansas. As I cross the Nebraska-Kansas line at sunset and look to the west, there is a combine unloading corn into a wagon. Looking into the sun on the horizon, all I can see is the silhouette of the combine and wagon, black amidst a cloud of dust against the red sky of the setting sun. It's a scene fitting of a post card, or perhaps a commercial singing the praises of midwestern agriculture. Art and artistry is where you find it.
It's dark as I hit U.S. 36 in Kansas and turn west. I stop at the small town of Norton for the night. Next morning the temperature is in the low 50s with gray clouds overhead, and intermittent drizzle as I head west. I stop at another small town, Oberlin, for breakfast. Too late - probably a good thing - I spot some huge, delicious looking cinnamon rolls. The waitress tells me that travelers from the east on their way to Denver often make a special effort to stop for these cinnamon rolls. I'll keep that in mind, as I'm sure my travels will someday take me this way again.
Farther west, with clouds over head I cross into Colorado and turn south on U.S. 385, the High Plains Highway. Last June, as I was traveling north on this same road, it was sunny, the ripening wheat a rich gold against bright blue skies. But today it is just brownish gray stubbles against gray skies. Some of the fields have already been cultivated and planted with the 2013 winter wheat crop.
In my narration of last June, one of my astute readers caught an error. I had incorrectly called U.S. 385 the "Great Plains Highway" instead of the "High Plains Highway." My reader was right - the Great Plains Highway is U.S. 81, the north-south highway through central Nebraska, Kansas, and down to Oklahoma City. U.S. 81 is close to the 99th meridian that roughly separates the midwestern Corn Belt from the Great Plains Wheat Belt.
South on the High Plains Highway, along the eastern edge of Colorado, it's a mixture of wheat, some irrigated corn, and dry range land, mostly flat, but some slight hills, to Granada and the Arkansas River. Then it's west along the river and the route of the Old Santa Fe Trail, through Lamar, Las Animas, to La Junta. From there, the old Santa Fe Trail veers southwest to Trinidad, and eventually to Santa Fe. But I take state Route 10 west to Walsenburg.
Toward Walsenburg the elevation rises perceptibly and the front range of the Rockies first appears on the western horizon. That stretch reminds me of Cole Porter's composition, "Don't Fence Me In." That nostalgic song features a lone rider who wants to straddle his old saddle under western skies, and ride to the ridge where the west commences, and wants to "wander over yonder till I see the mountains rise." Seeing the mountains rise does indeed stir the imagination.
There are, generally speaking, three Colorados: The approximately half of the state that is on the western edge of the Great Plains; the urbanized eastern front of the Rockies from Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, to Pueblo; and the mountain west. U.S. 160 from Walsenburg takes one over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Amidst alternate sunshine and brief showers, I descend to the broad San Luis Valley. The word "descend" is deceptive in that although one descends into the valley, it is approximately 7500 feet in elevation.
I cross the valley, now bathed in autumn sunshine, to Alamosa, billed as the "land of the cool sun," and the Rio Grande, which rises in the eastern slope of the San Juan Mountains west of Alamosa. My destination is Pagosa Springs. My friend, Elmer Schettler, has arranged for us to have dinner the next night with Fred Harman Jr., son of rancher and cowboy artist, the late Fred Harman, who created movie and comic book heroes of the 1940s, Red Ryder and Little Beaver.
It's late afternoon with clear skies. I could easily enough make it over Wolf Creek Pass to Pagosa Springs. But why rush? I would be heading into the sun. Maybe better to wait till morning and take a leisurely trip across with the sun at my back.
That turned out to be a good decision.
Next week: Revisiting Red Ryder country.
-John Waelti's column appears every Friday in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
