Midwest prairies

After a breakfast together and a farewell to Paul’s cousins, we headed out to the fairgrounds to dump the waste tanks in the trailer and head west. We’re travelling secondary roads today – no interstate and travelling through lots of small towns.

It looks like we’re in for cool mornings but hot, sunny days. Today is forecast for highs around 32 or 33 degrees C. but where we are stopping for the night looks like a low of 12C.

We passed through lots of farming today. Much of the corn has dried up. They also grow a grain called sorghum, often used for livestock feed but is a food grain in Asia and Africa. We also passed a number of cattle factory farms – thousands of cattle’s in pens with lots of dirt and no shade!

Tuesday night’s campground was at John Martin Reservoir State Park. There are 2 camping areas and we chose the lake area because there are quite a few trees and the temps are still up. Not only are there trees, but also electric hookups which means we can run the air conditioning.

The park was nearly empty and very quiet.

Wednesday’s driving was much the same with less winds but still hot and clear skies. We’ve seen a bit of different agriculture with a few farmers’ markets. We also saw our first foothills in the distance.

Our campground destination for tonight is at an elevation of 7500’ with minimal trees. However the low is to be 5 C so the lack of AC shouldn’t be a problem.

After making lunch in Pueblo, our landscape started to change. We started to see more rocks and even a few cacti. We entered the Arkansas River Recreation Area and eventually made it to the foothills and then followed the river for quite some time.

Busy River for rafting.

the trip today has been slower. Between some hills to come up and down and quite a bit of construction, it’s turned into a slower day. It’s now looking like we won’t get into our campground before 5 pm. Our aim is for a place west of Gunnison called Elk Creek. It’s in the National Recreation Area. Cell signal is questionable so I’m posting this now. We hope to spend 2 nights here.