Today we started to work our way toward home. We traveled from Colorado Springs, to Manhattan Kansas. We covered just under 500 miles in about 9 hours including stops. Almost the entire day was spent on Route 70.
No photos today, as the ride along Route 70 is not very scenic. Although, we did pass a huge area of large windmills. They were along a 15-20 mile stretch of road, and stood as far as the eye could see. I did a little research back at the hotel, and found that Kansas has a lot of these wind farms (makes sense with the kind of wind they have out here). The farm we saw is known as the Smokey Hills Wind Farm. The farm covers over 20,000 acres, and produces 250 Mega Watts, which is enough energy to supply roughly 100,000 homes. There are close to 200 windmills in this area. The size of the units is pretty impressive.
About half of the units are made by Vestas, and the other half are GE units. The Vestas units have blades that are 130 feet long, giving the mill a 260 foot blade diameter. Each blade weighs about 3000 lbs. !! There is also a huge hub/control room, where the blades attach. The whole unit sits on a tower that is about 270 feet tall. Pretty impressive when you see hundreds of these lining the highway. :)
The other highlights included a chance to see the OZ Museum (we're not in Kansas anymore Toto), a Telephone/Telephony museum, and my favorite, a place that claims to have the largest prairie dog (50 lbs), and a five legged steer (at least that is what the signs along the highway claimed). The only thing missing, was the worlds biggest ball of twine! We chose to visit exactly NONE of these !!!
So, we are now at the hotel in Manhattan Kansas, with dinner behind us. We still have about 1000 miles to get home, and plan to be home on Saturday.
I hear the weather at home is wonderful, and I can't hardly wait to get back :)