Sidesways to Colorado

We woke up this morning to beautiful, clear, blue sky. No hint of the severe storms that held us back yesterday. Happily, we started by visiting the Mushroom Rock State Park in Kansas. This is a tiny park that has a few wind shaped rock formations that resemble mushrooms or flying saucers on a pedestal, whichever way you want to look at them. The park is located about an hour and a half off the highway so we had the opportunity to drive on some country sideways. We found that sideways are much more scenic and although a bit slower than highways, they allow a glimpse of the real America. So for today, we decided to drive on a US-50, a two lane road that follows the Santa-Fe trail. US-50 took us to the town of Kinsley - the middle of the road between New York and San-Francisco. And so, now officially we were out west. We continued north-west, towards Colorado. The landscape changed as we moved westwards, the small farms we saw before, now became considerably bigger. The lush green vegetation became yellowish. We passed by Dodge City and Garden City - two old time cowboy towns where the cattle industry is still dominant. These made the vegetarian one of us feel stronger about her beliefs and the carnivore one feel hungry... As we entered Colorado, we started to go higher in elevation. Colorado Springs, our final destination for today is situated 6035 feet, or 1839 meters above sea level.
Colorado Springs is a beautiful town with amazing rock formations. It is surrounded by even higher mountains which we hope to explore tomorrow. We ended the day by visiting a park called "Garden of the Gods" which features some incredibly beautiful rocks.