Day 7 9/1/2010

Wonder View Tower, Genoa, CO

We got on the road around 7AM and started back for Missouri.  When I think of Colorado I automatically think of Mountains however in reality it seems like half the state is covered in Plains.  As we headed out of the mountains Jason and I spotted a huge red tower off to the side of the highway and had to stop.  It turned out that this was the "Wonder View Tower," of Genoa Colorado.  It had been a major tourist trap when it was built in the 1920s, housing a dance hall, restaurant, rattlesnake pit, and gas station.  Today the downstairs is filled with a flea market of sorts along with several animal oddities, including a stuffed 2 headed calf

2 headed calf

I don't have to go that bad!

and several animal freaks in jars.  Admission was only a dollar and well worth it.  When we went in Lindsay asked the lady who owns the place about a bathroom and was told that they had a privy outside.  Lindsay went out to use it and returned a short while later exclaiming about how I would never believe where she just had to go.  I was pretty sure I had a good idea but when she showed me a picture I had to go take a look for myself.  The men's privy had completely fallen over, while the women's was being propped up by a 2x4 and listing precariously.  Back inside, the stairway to the top of the tower is extremely steep and terminates in a trap door out onto the roof.  When we pulled up I thought I had seen people in the windows and atop the tower however these turned out to be oil drums dressed up as people.  The signs out front said that you could see 6 states from the tower and while I'm sure this is true, the real view was the stuff inside.  They had everything including the biggest collection of arrowheads I have ever seen, and parts from several woolly mammoths or maybe they were mastodons.  All of it was for sale, but mostly out of my price range.  We spent way more time here than we had ever planned and it was worth every minute.  Back on the road we had one more goal, Prairie Dog Town in Oakley, Kansas, home of the "world's largest prairie dog."  I had wanted to stop there on the way out but we didn't have enough time.  Prairie Dog Town was a little more anticlimactic than the Wonder View Tower.  While the prairie dogs were cute, and it sounds exciting to see a six legged cow, in reality many of the animals looked sick, including a bison who's ribs were very apparent, and cows with birth defects that were obviously uncomfortable and attracting massive amounts of flies.  They had coyotes, prairie chickens, foxes, and lots of other types of animals.  They also had a rattlesnake pit and stuffed two headed calf both of which are apparently required for a tourist trap in this part of the country.  The Chinese ringnecked chickens were beautiful, and the giant rabbit really was gigantic.  In the end though I felt sorry for the extra-legged cows and starved bison, and the "world's largest prairie dog" turned out to be a giant concrete statue of a prairie dog.

World's largest prairie dog

  Back on the road again, Jason set to work finding transportation back to Sault Ste Marie.  He managed to book a greyhound out of St Louis at 2:55 AM.  We made it back to the city around 12:30, unloaded the car, washed Jason's clothes, and had him downtown just in time for his 3AM departure.