Kansas goes on and on

 There wasn't much to say about yesterday's adventures since we spent our day driving through rainstorms and dark cloudy weather across Kansas. If you haven't driven it yourself, allow me to summarize it visually for you:

Completely flat landscape broken up by a farmhouse. Oooo. This one is red.

Here's a completely flat landscape broken up by a single tree.

Here's a panorama photo I took this morning of the 360º completely flat landscape. At least it was sunny.

Ray took this one out of the window of our hotel's breakfast room. Kind of pretty for being next to the highway, right? It doesn't look completely flat because of the grading which rises up to the highway. But it IS completely flat. Really. Other than that.

Yesterday was broken up by a lunch stop 5 miles off of I70 at the surprisingly unflat and very beautiful Wilson State Park. Hard to believe we were still in Kansas, right?

Even the cows looked happier on the rolling landscape.

Before driving out of town this morning, we stopped for a photo op with this honkin' big Buffalo Bill statue. 

Again, another pretty state park stop for lunch.

And five hours later (yes, I know 4 hours was my limit, but we've got places out here we want to see, and enough already with Kansas) we're in Alamosa, CO, on our way to Durango tomorrow. After all of that flatness, it was really exciting to see the mountains for the first time today! I sent the kids a photo right away. Ray likes the handwriting on the photo, so here it is.

We took the most direct route we could, and we enjoyed the wide open spaces with almost zero traffic. Even though we were on 2- or 4-lane roads, the speed limit was 65 which we maintained almost all the time. Driving was really pleasant, and the views were astounding.

Getting closer!

And closer!

From now on, the photos should be fabulous -- it's crazy beautiful out here.