We're staying in a great Corp of Engineers campground below the dam at the John Redmond Reservoir, but with no Internet access there I write from the comfortable and elegant town library.  We arrived two days ago and nearly froze the first night.  Today after two days of sun, the temperature reached into the 60's.  Still, we had hoped it would be a bit warmer by now.  The local folks say this weather is very unusual for late April.

Still, the storm that pulled in the cold air brought important rain to the area on Tuesday.  We drove across this storm going across Missouri and Kansas on our way in.  The fields are wet and the ponds are holding a bit of water.  That is good for the birds.  I'll provide complete lists later (when we have Internet in our living room), but for now can say we are finding regional birds that we don't normally find in the East.  Perhaps most fun is Harris's Sparrow that we have seen only twice before in the far north.  They winter here and are locally "a trash bird."  They are singing and entertaining us enormously.  We have also seen Greater Prairie Chickens, Swainson's Hawks, and a few Central States sparrows.  Most of the winter birds have left and many migrants have yet to arrive, but we are finding plenty of birds to look at.

On the road for our anniversary we went out to dinner in little downtown Burlington last evening.  Good people here.  The section in this library on Kansas includes the book, Bloody Kansas that speaks of rougher times when that New York radical, John Brown, and others brought terrorism here.  Kansas became a free state and sent perhaps a larger share of volunteers than any other state to the terrible war for which our county seat of Gettysburg is best known.

Tomorrow, we move about 150 miles west to near Great Bend and will visit the Quivara National Wildlife Refuge among other places before moving to higher plains in Colorado next week.  The weather forecast is good.  We will probably freeze again starting on May 2nd when we reach Gunnison in the Rockies.  Silly, I know, but the Gunnsion Sage Grouse are booming on the lek right now and will be finishing up shortly.  We have never seen this bird!  We must go to Colorado now.