Just on the east side of Monarch Pass is a town called Salida. We decided to make the town our temporary home for two nights while we rested our legs after the big pull up to our nation's natural separation. Much to our surprise, the very weekend we made our stop, the FIBArK Whitewater Festival was also taking place in the historic old town Salida. In fact, we would have never noticed had we not decided to visit a bike shop for supplies on our day of rest. Since we did notice, we strolled around, had some delicious beers, and watched the festivities. Among the many kayak and rafting competitions, the most entertaining was the hooligan race; a competition of creative raft building, speed, and most important, survival. The winner was a vessel titled "natural disaster" which was ultimately a whitewater flotilla complete with a burning tree.
As far as we can tell, Salida will be our last chance to take advantage of free camping on our public lands. In the coming stretch of the country, we will see less BLM land, shorter but steeper hills, and more agriculture. For us, the increase in fertile land means we will have to be more creative and more inquisitive when searching for our nightly tent sites.
Eastern Colorado, Kansas, and the Midwest are unexplored places for all three of us travelers. It is also where I think we will start noticing significant differences in the people, culture, and scenery. Until this point, we have seen a variety of different geological formations and terrain, but the general population is not much different than those in the pacific northwest. Moving east, we will be sharing the road with the corn farming communities of America, who feed our country (hogs, cattle, and people), believe conservatively, and live rurally. Of course, these are the preconceptions I've set out to explore.
No comments:
Post a Comment