Tacos, Wrong Turns & Cattle Truck Backups
Part 1: We started our Cattle Drive Road Trip on a Thursday morning. If you missed my post on why this road trip happened, read this. We set out with beef jerky, taco-flavored sunflower seeds, Fritzi the dog, and high hopes.
Kansas was going to be the tenth state Fritzi had visited and she was very excited. Just kidding. She only cares about getting to go along. I was excited for her. Fritzi is a well-traveled dog.
Our final destination for the day was Dodge City, Kansas (405 miles from our home in Loveland, Colorado). Lucy’s #2 was our first stop in Lamar (248 miles), a taco shop I’d been told to check out. My taco need is real. But first, we were going through the Eastern Plains of Colorado in May, the greenest time for this region.
Our road trip took us through small towns like Hugo and Kit Carson, where I once ate an amazing hamburger at the now-closed Trading Post Restaurant. We stopped in Eads because we wanted to let the dog stretch her legs, and of course, I wanted a few photos.
Here’s a road trip tip. We usually get off the main drag in nearly every town we come upon. This means a drive around a block or two because most are small. This is a fun way to see a place and it is part of our travels, so I don’t see it as wasting drive time. I see it as gaining knowledge and adding to my many photographs of small towns.
Eads, Colorado, is cute—we were even passed on the sidewalk by a gang of small, friendly, free-range children on bicycles. They yelled a hearty hello to Fritzi. I love those moments.
Back in the truck, we continued to Lucy’s #2, in Lamar. The original Lucy’s Tacos is 56 miles west in La Junta, Colorado. The Arkansas River flows through Lamar, as it does most of Southern Colorado, so it’s greenish at this time of year.
Lucy’s #2 looks like it stepped out of another time. Late for lunch, we had to knock on the window to order. But after that, all was good. A little fatty, these tacos were packed with meat. And a little fat never hurt anyone, contrary to popular belief. It makes food taste yummy.
Ryan didn’t care for the so-called guacamole, the green sauce on everything (he thought he’d get real guacamole), but it was a fine lunch. As far as tacos are concerned, I was happy and the place is affordable.
Being a Thursday, things were quiet in Lamar. Passed lunchtime, we had the outdoor seating area to ourselves.
And then, our only navigational mistake on this road trip was made. We exited Lucy’s #2 and went south. Chatting about a book we’d both recently read, “Doc” by Mary Doria Russell, no one paid attention to the map app on Ryan’s phone. Ryan never has the sound on otherwise we’d have heard her berating us.
Zooming towards Texas, not a care in the world, I mumbled several times that it was interesting that Dumas, Texas, was listed on the road signs. This town was one of our destinations on the Dust Bowl Road Trip. We discovered an excellent brewery there and we encountered an actual dust storm.
A License to Drink in Texas & A Dust Storm
When we finally realized we were heading in the wrong direction, we were about thirty minutes out of Lamar, going south, not east. This meant we’d have to take Hwy 116 into the south side of Dodge City, instead of Hwy 400 into the north side. The Cattle Drive Road Trip had taken a diversion.
The new route took us through windswept towns and empty fields. We did not explore any of them. I was rather unhappy at this point. I know I’ve written it before but I do not “roll with the punches.” Always a gal with a plan; that plan never includes flat tires or taking wrong turns.
Ryan and I have differing opinions about how late we arrived in Dodge City on our Cattle Drive Road Trip, but we got there after being stuck in construction and passing at least 100 cattle trucks. Fritzi, on the other hand, does not care about flat tires or detours.
A Flat Tire, New Tires & Poppin’ Wheelies in Oklahoma
Tired, we ended up checking into the Holiday Inn Express & Suites. If I’d booked it early, I’d have gotten it for $50 cheaper per night, but oh well. We were trying to do this trip without reservations, but this may not have been the best idea. It was graduation weekend in Dodge City, and hotels were pricey (for the area).
In my head, I’d budgeted around $150 per night for Dodge City, but it was about $200 plus the dog fee. It turned out that the hotel was perfectly situated and quite frankly I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else, especially with a dog. Right next to Wright Park, and within walking distance of everything downtown, in the end, we were happy with this Dodge City hotel.
By the way, Dodge City is one hour ahead of Colorado in Central Standard Time, so by the time we’d explored Wright Park with the dog, we were ready for dinner.
There isn’t much to choose from on a Thursday night in Dodge City, Kansas. We walked to the Central Station Bar & Grill where the bartender told us that the town is quiet Sunday through Thursday. “It’s a Friday/Saturday night town,” she said.
Our goal had been to get somewhere for dinner by the time the Denver Nuggets were playing on television. We did, but unfortunately, the playoff game was sad. Our meals, however, were good and I’ve never been so happy about having a big, cold Bud Light
This restaurant is a sports bar. There are 16 televisions here so it is the place to watch a game in Dodge City. On Fridays and Saturdays, the club lights come on a DJ spins tunes.
After dinner, we toyed with the idea of crossing the tracks to Kate’s, which looked like one of those dive bars we’d find on our travels. We assume it is named after Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday’s girlfriend and a larger-than-life character in the book “Doc” that we’d just read about the man and his time in Dodge City.
However, we were tired. The first day of our I’m Your Huckleberry, A Cattle Drive Road Trip was over. Having driven more than the 405 miles we had planned, we were done. We did play a little cards with Doc Holliday on the way back to the hotel and looked forward to our first full day in Dodge City.
Read I’m Your Huckleberry, A Cattle Drive Road Trip: The Reason Why to find out why we’re on this adventure.
