How Do You Spell "Rod Serling?"

After our snow adventure, Joe and I decided we wanted to see Coffeyville, Kansas on the way home to see the site of the Dalton shootout. The quickest way across to kansas cut across Colorado on some rather dubious roads. We decided to do it anyway and, with a full tank of gas (no services for well over 100 miles) we set out to cross Colorado. Late in the evening, after seeing nothing but fences and fields for hours, we saw a huge glow of lights in the distance. Soon we drove into La Junta, Colorado.

We thought we had entered the Twilight Zone.

La Junta is situated roughly in the middle of no damn where. Yet this speck on the map was brightly lit by streetlights. There were large buildings, major hotel chains, and restaurants. People were everywhere. There were theaters, movie and live. We saw ladies in furs and diamonds and real-live Rolls Royce automobiles driving next to us on the road. Mercedes Benz, Aston-Martin, and Jaguar were also common cars on the streets. We were convinced that if we looked on the right corner, we’d see Rod Serling laughing and waving. As they say today …… WTF !!!!

We stopped at a restaurant and went in to eat dinner. There we were in Levi’s work shirts and jeans and the place was filled with people in suits, tuxedos and evening dresses. We asked the waiter if we were supposed to be there, were we dressed ok, and he smiled and said sure.
We later found out that all of the fences and fields we had passed were huge ranches. The road we took in was used as a back access road to many of these million-acre ranches. La Junta was where the roads and the railroads met. It was where all of the obscenely rich ranchers in this part of Colorado went to hobnob, show-off, and talk business. We had walked into “Cattle Central” and didn’t even know it. We stayed the night just to say we had, and moved on the next morning. Still in shock over this discovery in the Colorado countryside.