Day Six: Wyoming and Montana
Today was mostly a driving day, but we did stop briefly at the Little Bighorn Battlefield, where we wandered around a bit, and Jim busted out an old-timey picture-taking contraption that he claimed was a camcorder.
We spent the rest of the day making our way to the Stonehouse Inn in Virginia City, where we met up with Henry Larrabee’s great-granddaughter, Joetta, and her husband, Bob. Although it’s a tiny town, we somehow managed to get lost when we turned up one of the many dirt streets and failed to realize it actually went to the left and not up the hill. There was no way we really could have known this since it wasn’t marked, but who am I to say it should have had a sign? I, too, am from a town with dirt streets, and only one of them is marked with its name spelled correctly.
Our host, a former heavy equipment mechanic, sheep shearer, and cowboy named John, helped us get settled in our rooms upstairs. I got a pink room with a balcony and a giant stuffed bunny on the bed (hooray for me!). Jim had first option on it, but for some reason he passed. Since this is still the slow season for John and his wife, Linda, they let us spread out all our stuff in the dining room, and while Jim, Joetta, and Bob dove into the research, I filmed everything with my new camera. John and Linda were a tremendous help since they’re both knowledgeable about the area and involved with the local museum in town. After an hour or so of work, we all drove to a restaurant a few miles away. The community kids were putting on a fundraiser dinner for their FCCLA group. We were happy to support them, but I have to admit I felt a little despondent over the idea of consuming yet another steak. I’ve probably eaten the equivalent of the back half of a small steer since we left California last week.
Day Five: South Fork Crazy Woman
Jim doubled back on the freeway just so I could get this photo. That’s the kind of guy he is!
Day Four: Colorado and Wyoming
I feel road weary tonight. We’ve been traveling for five days and have already visited seven states. We drove from Castle Rock, Colorado, to Sheridan, Wyoming, with one short trip to Fort Laramie. We talked to the ranger there--who just happened to be from Red Bluff--about routes Henry Larrabee might have taken home from Virginia City, Montana, where we are headed tomorrow. He was very knowledgeable about the region’s history, and also provided me with some useful facts that I fully intend to test when I get home: Buffalo chips burn hot like coal and buffalo tongue tastes a lot like prime rib.
I also made some new firefighter friends at Fort Laramie named Kyle and Luke. They said they are stationed nearby and came out to the fort to learn more about the area. They were also pretty excited about the plant identification books they intended to purchase, bless their hearts.
Day Four: Dodge City, Kansas
I just wanted to post a few photos from our visit to Dodge City. When we got into town, we checked into our motel and then headed to Casey’s Cowtown Steakhouse. A day that begins with rattlesnakes and The Wizard of Oz requires a bourbon and t-bone finish. Everybody knows that. The next morning we allotted a couple hours for walking around the Boot Hill Museum. We enjoyed it, although many of the exhibits were closed. Jim had trouble containing his glee when we discovered the photo booth wouldn’t open until summer. Alas, no Miss Kitty.
Day Three: More on Oz
We got the hell out of Dodge around noon yesterday (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I’ll tell you about our time there, but first I want to fill in some details about our visit to Liberal and our drive north on Wednesday…
After the Larrabees dropped us off at our motel and we said goodbye to our new friends, we drove over to a laundromat so Jim could dry the clothes he washed the night before. He had attempted to do this in the microwave in his room, but it hadn’t worked out too well for him. Once his clothes were dry, we drove over to the newly restored Rock Island Line Depot for lunch. Then it was off to the Coronado Museum, which is in a house that was built by Henry Larrabee’s son, Lee, in 1918. The big draw at the museum complex is Dorothy’s House, which wasn’t in the Wizard of Oz movie, but the folks in Liberal have furnished it to resemble a typical farmhouse from that era. The pantry featured a an old pressure cooker that looked like a cartoon bomb.
After Dorothy’s House, our tour guide, Gary, led us to a building that houses five thousand square feet of animated Oz magic. According to him, the exhibit was donated to the museum by an elderly couple who had enjoyed recreating scenes from Frank Baum’s stories in diorama. He also said that normally the museum has high school girls who dress up like Dorothy to lead the tour, but he was filling in since they were in school at the time (we did get to see one of these girls a little later). After the tour, we went back to the main museum. Gary, who is a local historian and former eighth grade teacher, didn’t know a lot about Henry either, so Jim shared some of the information he’s gathered.
We headed north to Dodge City in the afternoon and stopped at a couple roadside attractions along the way. The best one was a hideout used by the Dalton Gang. The guy who ran the place was not only knowledgeable about the Daltons, but western history in general.
OK, it looks like I’m not going to have time to write about Dodge City this morning, but I will tonight. We have to cover a lot of ground today and should land somewhere in Wyoming tonight.
Day Three: The Larrabee Boys and The Wizard of Oz
After eating steak for both lunch and dinner yesterday, I opted for the fruit plate this morning despite the waitress’s warning that most of it came from a can. I was somewhat surprised that I did not regret this decision. Once we finished breakfast, we drove around town a little before Jim called Joe Larrabee to arrange a place to meet. Joe said he’d be over in a few minutes with his brother Bill. We all had coffee at the motel restaurant and looked over some photos and documents Jim brought with us. They didn’t have much new information to share, but they offered to take us around to see some sites.
Jim didn’t look too sure about things when I eagerly accepted Joe Larrabee’s invitation to go see his snakes before we did anything else. As a surveyor, Jim spends a lot of time trying NOT to see (or, more accurately, feel) rattlers when he’s working in the field. He’s a good sport, though, and we took off with the Brothers Larrabee to peer inside Joe’s giant box of snakes. Joe used to put on shows featuring the snakes, but stopped doing them recently because it was too expensive. He also told me that he took up hunting snakes as an alternative to golf.
After the rattlers, we headed out to Arkalon, which is where Henry Larrabee first settled before the family moved into Liberal. There isn’t much in Arkalon now but an abandoned school house and a cemetery. I did get to see a praire dog, though (Joe is always on the lookout for them because rattlesnakes also live in their prairie dog towns). After that, we drove down to the Cimarron River, which wasn’t much wider than a big creek. There we saw a beaver dam and the bridge known as “Mighty Sampson.” Bill said the bridge was built in “quickie sand” and that in order to support the bridge, the engineers had to bury pylons 90 feet deep (that was his rough estimate).
While driving around with Bill, Jim also learned that what he saw yesterday was probably a female grouse and not a roadrunner. And to my dismay, Bill confirmed that Jim probably did see a boar’s head in the road. Hog farming is apparently big here.
We ended our tour with the Larrabees at the cemetery in Liberal where their great-grandfather, Henry, is buried. It might be difficult to see in this tiny photo, but the headstone was very unusual, and Jim and I wondered if the pattern etched into the front might possibly contain another clue.
I don’t have time to write about our trip to the museum, but I will leave you with this tantalizing photo of the Wizard of Oz exhibit. My favorite part of this tour was our guide’s retelling of Frank Baum’s story. It was folksy, succinct, and featured lines like “well, I guess that old witch was pretty sore about those shoes....” It was, in a word, OZSOME!
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