From the Trail

They look like they stepped out of the pages of a history book. These guys and gals aren't Saturday night cowboys. Their cowboy hats and chaps are like a second skin, not a movie prop. Their stance in the saddle is as comfortable as if they were sitting in an SUV instead of atop four legs providing their horse power. They are the drovers of the 2011 Kansas Cattle Drive.

Their journey commemorates Kansas' 150th birthday. It began on Labor Day weekend in Caldwell and will end September 24 in Ellsworth. They are loosely following the Cox Cattle Trail, named for William M. Cox, a general livestock agent for the Kansas Pacific Railway Co. in the 1800s.

On Tuesday night, the drovers laid out their bedrolls or pitched tents in a pasture southeast of Sylvia.

Tom Schick, an Oklahoma cowboy, says that taking care of their horses is one of the first tasks as they head into camp. They hitch their mounts to a rope line and spread out alfalfa for them to eat.

The "cookie" makes sure the cowboys are well fed.

Hardtack may have been on cowboys' dinner plates a century ago, but this crew travels with a refrigerator/freezer that gets plugged in at night. Chili was on the menu Tuesday night.

At 7:45 the next morning, as the sun struggled to peek through a cloudy sky, they opened the pasture gates and began their 15-mile journey to Wednesday's campsite on the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.

Though it's a scene that could transport you back to the 1800s, there are reminders that it is the 21st Century. A cowboy or two just might have been talking on cell phones. And port-a-potties took the place of building a nightly latrine.

Wednesday evening at the Quivira camp, some sat around the fire, maybe as much for the stories as for the steak that was on the night's menu.

Those stories flowed as freely as the coffee hanging from the pot at the end of the cook stove ... until someone noticed a couple of small visitors who had come to say hello to some real cowboys.

The meal may have been served on plastic tables, but the food was dished from cast iron pans onto metal plates, filling the cowboys' bellies for another day on the trail.

To read more about the journey, visit the website for the Kansas Cattle Drive 2011. They will be at a celebration in Ellinwood this weekend before making the final trek to Ellsworth on September 24. Happy Trails!

Git Along Lil' Dogies

She is the Pied Piper of longhorns, gently calling the behemoth-horned steers into a journey that blends past and present.

As 210 longhorns crested a hill, it looked like a scene from a century gone by. A cloudy and cool September morning was punctuated with sunflowers waving in the Kansas breeze as Carmen Schultz led the way along with a longhorn named Roger. The Medford, Oklahoma, cowgirl is among the 35 drovers who are making the three-week Kansas Cattle Drive in honor of Kansas' 150th birthday.

They began the journey on Labor Day weekend in Caldwell and will end September 24 in Ellsworth. They are loosely following the Cox Cattle Trail, named for William M. Cox, a general livestock agent for the Kansas Pacific Railway Co. in the 1800s. By 1871, Ellsworth was a mecca for cattle drives, with more than 30,000 head of cattle shipped through the central Kansas town.

In days gone by, I suppose the locals were accustomed to watching cowboys herd longhorns from Texas past their own pasture fences on their way to market. These days, the out-of-state visitors in our area are more likely to be toting guns for recreational hunting, rather than using them to kill a jackrabbit to cook over an open flame for nourishment on their way to a Kansas cattle shipping outpost as they would have in the 1870s.

(You can see Randy on the pickup bed in the background - a blend of new and old!)

On Wednesday, Randy and I joined other sightseers to witness a cattle drive reminiscent of those our Kansas ancestors may have seen a century ago. A wagon with a matched team of horses led the way over a hill just south of one of the pastures near Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, where part of our cow-calf herd has spent the summer.

The cowboys at the back of the pack had a sign to the refuge's visitor center to point the way. (Of course, they could also have followed the hoof prints down the sandy road.)

To read more about the journey and "meet" the trailhands, visit the website for the Kansas Cattle Drive 2011. And come back here tomorrow for more of my glimpses from the cattle drive.

Happy Trails!