Dodge City Kansas Roadtrip Air Museum / Road sights

Cobra Gunship with yours truly at the helm..............

This is a British made "Hawker - Siddely Gnat...........It has twin jet engines and is low, lean and looks very mean.

An old vietnam era F-104 Thunder (thud) Chief ........as they called them.
A very big aircraft.

WW2 Trainer...my Dad flew one of these....

Finally on the Road from Fritch at 10:30 AM. The weather was warm but a lot of storms in the area. Perfect riding weather. Hit a few minor showers the first two hours. Made it to Liberal Kansas at 1:00PM. Went to visit the Mid America Air Museum in Liberal. After a 1/2 tour of Liberal and 2 wrong turns we finally found our way there. It was trying to rain again so threw a small tarp over the side car and gear. All my luggage is somewhat water resistant but definately not water proof. Another old Texas farm stead ruin along the road.

The Air Museum in Liberal was well worth the time to see. A lot of smaller civilian / military aircraft. Below is the "Business End" of a B-25 Mitchel Gun Ship. This variant sported 8 50 Cal. Nose guns instead of the more common plexi nosed single 50 Cal. version. They had 4 or 5 different Air Force training aircraft. The museum holds well over 100 aircraft.

Leaving Liberal Kansas we were Dodge City bound or so we thought. A few miles out of town we had lightening hitting too close for comfort. Oneightening strike hit an oil storage tank a few miles north of us. coming over a hill about 5 miles out of town the we saw that a literal wall of water was a mile before us. No way was I driving into it. I did a fast u-turn and high tailed it back to Liberal. Found an abandoned gas station with an awning so pulled in to sit out the worse of the storm.

We hid out here for 45 minutes and let the biggest part of the storm pass. We watched in the distance as the big oil fire sent a column of smoke way up. Decided to take a more northern route to Dodge City and only drove into one fairly heavy rain storm.