Oakley, Kansas!

 

Thanks for reading through all our adventures at the ranch! We were so very glad it worked out to go, to meet our new friends in real life, and to see amazing things in God's creation we've never seen that up close and personal before! 

After we left the ranch, we headed toward Oakley, Kansas, which I'm pretty sure I first heard about from my sister, followed by a lot of Pinterest research! This day happened to be our 102nd monthiversary, and I am confident we will have to work hard to top the views we enjoyed on this day. 

We had to drive about three hours from the ranch to reach Oakley, and we were both completely hangry. (This was my fault. Ryan found a really cool place to pull off a back road and eat with a view, but I freaked out about the lack of signal if we should have trouble getting Abby started again and ruined that plan.) When we arrived in Oakley, though, we were able to have a picnic lunch at the cultural center there, and it was really fun!

See that big old statue up on the hill behind me? It's actually two times life size, but it felt MUCH bigger when we stood next to it. It's a bronze statue of Buffalo Bill, and you can read some fun facts about it here. We had a lot of fun with our photo opps! (And we had the place to ourselves, so BONUS!) 

(Why yes, I am picking its nose.)

And a tripod shot for the win...

I confess I'm not well-versed on the wild west, so if you're like me, let me catch you up on the story behind this statue. Back in the 1860s, a man named William Cody (nicknamed Buffalo Bill) was challenged to a showdown with William Comstock, who was also nicknamed Buffalo Bill. Both men were known for the buffalo hunting skills. One hunted to feed crews laying railroad track. The other hunted to feed soldiers. But only one could keep the title of Buffalo Bill, and it would be the one who won the showdown. William Cody won (by a respectable margin) and became quite well-known...not just as one who hunted, but as a defining face of the old west. 

After we were done with our photo shoot, we headed into the cultural center, and YOU GUYS!!!! The lady working in there should teach a class to all workers at all visitors' centers in all parts of the country. She was a GEM. Her name was Alice and she works there just a few hours a week. When we walked in, she jumped up, offered to make us some coffee and encouraged us to look all around. The building isn't terribly old, and it's really lovely. Huge couches if you need to sit and rest a while, reportedly very clean bathrooms, and of course, the coffee. She waited on us while we bought souvenirs and gave us some pointers on other sightseeing we were doing that day. I just loved her. 

I was going to show you pictures of the next stop we went on, but the campground where we're staying tonight is all nestled in some trees (PRAISE THE LORD! WE FOUND SOME TREES!) and my signal isn't great. It'll take me over an hour to upload pictures, so I'll just do it tomorrow instead. 

I will give you a sneak peek, though, and tell you that after leaving this center, we drove about 20 miles away to visit Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. It is seriously one of the most picturesque places I have ever seen. And yes, I do know how weird that sounds when talking about Kansas. 

We also tried to see Monument Rocks, which was high on my list, but we could not get down the road to it (safely) in Abby. It was a heavily rutted dirt road, and we were going to have to drive seven miles on it to get there. We were driving about five miles an hour and felt like our teeth were going to fall out, because the whole RV was shaking so badly. We made it about a mile and a half and turned around. It wasn't worth risking Abby's structural integrity. We were sad to miss it, but it was the right decision. So I guess our advice is if you go in an RV, drive the road at your own risk!