Monday 27 September 2010

Day 31 – Time To Get The Heck Out Of Dodge

This morning we tried to get up at 9am, but were unsuccessful. What was supposed to be a quick extra snooze somehow lasted two hours. Ah, what are you gonna do, these things happen! When we finally did get going we discovered there was no water in the bathroom taps. Uh-oh…showering is the only way to start our day! So, lacking any better solution we went for a swim in the pool. Down there we found a lot of maintenance guys running in and out of a room with a big boiler and we figured our room was probably not the only one to be effected by the lack of water. With no way to get rid of the pool’s chlorine I had to settle on a day of crazy hair, but it was better than a day of gross bed hair. Perhaps this was a case of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.

Being that we’ve found ourselves in the Wild West again, there was only one place to head to in Dodge City – Boot Hill. Boot Hill is named after the cemetery that rests on it where unlucky souls were buried in not much more than their boots. Despite being a well-known resting place, no famous people were ever buried there and long ago most of the bodies were moved elsewhere.
Much like Deadwood, Dodge City prides itself on having legitimate cowboy history, being home to the legendary Wyatt Earp. Sadly, it was as disappointing as Deadwood too. The city was a recreation of what the town would have looked like in its heyday, but the 1880 Town we visited in South Dakota was much better and more authentic. This felt tacky and even the lady that took our entrance fee seemed like we were an inconvenience. Joe wanted to buy a cowboy hat, but seeing as he’d already bought and lost one hat on this trip, I talked him out of it…
We had thought there’d be more to do in Dodge, but we couldn’t really find anything that was worth our time. We drove around for a while looking for an antiques mall that was advertised everywhere, but didn’t appear to exist. Finally we gave up and went for lunch at Applebees, where we had the world’s friendliest waiter. He loves dogs and will tell you that with little or no prompting.
Even though we got up late, by 4pm we had run out of things to do, so we did what we always do when we have time to kill - we went to the movies. The film was ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’, which Joe enjoyed more than I did as I was not feeling too great. Still one thing we do love about being on the road is seeing all the different movie theatres across the country and this one was proper old-school 80’s. Love it!
So, until tomorrow…
Ani

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