New hometown

So far on my trip there are two cities I wouldn't mind living in: Bismarck, N.D., and Hays. Hays is a college town with pleasant neighborhoods, a great brewpub, a city buffalo herd, and the famous fish-within-a-fish fossil at the Sternberg museum (see here), which when I visited also featured paintings by Koko, the sign-language gorilla. (Is it art?) Even the Hays public swimming pool, built of golden Kansas limestone, looks great.

Hays is also home to an 1800s frontier fort. Multipurpose Fort Hays was the supply center of a string of western Kansas forts and protected the Butterfield freight and stage route, then later the railroad. Here Custer camped with his 7th cavalry during the Plains Indian wars.

The fort had a re-enactment the weekend I was there, so I met Buffalo Bill (Kirk Shapland, who I later heard was one of the best), a cavalryman showing off his tarp-tent, and Michael, who'd built his own Gatling gun and cannon and towed them to events like this by trailer. They were relatively simple models, he said, and didn't require any permits.

Michael said now that Civil War re-enactment is almost mainstream, many old-timers are turning to re-enacting World War II and even the Korean and Vietnam wars. Apparently it's easy to get Russian World War II-era armaments (including captured German weapons) from African countries that acquired them after the war. It's not always an easy hobby. Once one of Michael's acquaintances had a Panzer tank hung up in customs at a Texas port for a year.