Dodge City Days II: Rain Out
Dodge Rain Delays
The a short, second installment of my photo essay of my trip to Dodge City. The first installment is now unlocked and available to all. The next installment should be arriving in the next week. -Darrick
Most of Friday was taken up with grading, as the rain fell in torrents until the late afternoon.
I managed to take Gus for a walk in the park while it drizzled sometime after three o’clock, and then tried to snap a few photos of the hills at the city limits when you enter Dodge City (for some reason I did not get any shots of the iconic “cowboy” sign):
The first thing that greets you when you drive into Dodge is of course the feed yard, which is larger than those of most towns in Western Kansas.
By the time the rain finally stopped for good, there was little left to do in the evening in terms of sightseeing, so I left Gus in the hotel room and went over to the Boot Hill Distillery, so named because it was built upon the grounds of the famous “Boothill Cemetery,” where many men were supposedly buried in their boots after having been gunned down. (Of which more anon, as I visited the “Boot Hill Museum” as well.)
The distillery was selling special bottles of whiskey to celebrate the town’s 150th anniversary, but I tried a flight of their bourbons instead, striking up a conversation with a gentleman at the bar from Austin. (The flight was very good, if you are wondering.) You can see the anniversary bottles in the picture below.
After a couple of hours, I headed back to the hotel to turn in early. After my initial forays on the first day in town, I was a bit saddened that I had little time to explore because of the rain. I wanted to make up for it the next day and take as much in as I could. I did not articulate this to myself (you never do—it will surely guarantee that it does not happen) but already I could sense that this was going to be a special journey for me, an important experience. Something told me I needed to be ready, to be in the moment, from then on. My fear of being disappointed slowly left me by the time I made it to bed that night.
And, indeed, I would not be not disappointed.