This morning we continued driving west from Garden City, Kansas. First stop was to look at some ruts. Well, not just any old ruts but ruts made by the wagon trains travelling the Santa Fe Trail. The ruts aren’t very visible, at least to my eyes, but the trail is a significant part of the history of this area.

First stop in Colorado was the Welcome Center in Lamar. The volunteer manning the center was very help and told us about a couple of interesting things to see in Lamar like the oldest building in the world. Yup, according to Ripley’s Believe It or Not the building is 175,000,000 years old --- well at least the part of the building is built from petrified wood.

7D_8861

We saw some interesting things during our drive today ---a dust devil, a crop duster in action, an old school house, lots of flat fields and this.

7D_8883
Not sure what a zebra was doing a farm in Colorado.

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site is a reconstructed private fort built by Charles and William Bent and their partner Ceran St. Vrain on the north bank of the Arkansas River, the boundary between the United States and Mexico, in 1883. They traded with trappers, native tribes and settlers travelling the Santa Fe Trail.

7D_8889

7D_8902_3_4.jpg

7D_8933_4_5.jpg

7D_8998
No fuel available here today.

7D_9015_6_7.jpg
Set up and relaxing at the campground. The sun didn’t co-operate and left some spots on the photo.

7D_9020_1_2.jpg
A better photo of our truck and tent. Tonight is the first night we are sleeping in the truck. So far I’m enjoying the camping experience, but we’ll see when it's the middle of the night and the temperature goes down to 40 F (about 6 C) and I have to get up to use the facilities.

7D_9031_2_3.jpg
The view from the campground.