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JANETRUPP's avatar
JANETRUPP
Explorer
Jan 26, 2015

Hwy 50 Colorado thru Kansas

Hi all, Just starting our planning. We will be up at Moab and thinking of taking the 70 to the 50 and following it out thru Colorado, Kansas and make our way south around 77 near Wichita to the 60E. We will be stopping in Wagoner, OK to visit a friend.
Is the 50 a good road? We will be traveling with a 40'MH towing and wanted a different route to see new things. We also try to avoid big cities. I'll listen to any suggestions you have and also looking for stops of must-sees along the route.

Thanks in advance ;)
Janet
  • We need a like button here, lol Thank you all so much for the great info. With a big rig we are very careful what roads to take. We are planning Bullhead City, AZ to Florida and back. Northern route out thru Arches etc and the 10 back since it will be in winter.
    Thanks again for all your help. It is appreciated :B

    Janet
  • Would suggest a stop at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. If you have a little bit of extra time,110 miles additional miles or 187 if you go to I4o from Taos, I would leave the Black Canyon go to Durango CO then to Taos NM then to Wagoner. If you do go to Durango experience the Durango Silverton Railroad and take a day trip in your toad to Mesa Verde National Park 36 miles from Durango.
  • Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP is worth the detour off the highway. Take the tow down the East Portal Road which is just past the entrance to the park. This road will take you down into the bottom of the canyon, a totally different perspective.

    In mid summer, if you spend some time near Gunnison, take the road up past Mt. Crested Butte to the ghost town of Gothic. Some of the most amazing wildflowers anywhere in the state.

    As noted, Monarch Pass is the only real pull on this route. Stop at the top and take the tram up for even better views.

    Take some time to check out downtown Salida. A number of nice art shops showcasing local artists with reasonable prices. Enough great restaurants to keep you smiling for days. During the summer, they have free concerts in the park down by the river. Of course one could spend weeks exploring the upper Arkansas River Valley north of Salida. Check out St. Elmo if you like well preserved ghost towns.

    The trip from Salida down to Pueblo is mostly along the river and while it has some curves, this is a scenic and easy trip out of the mountains.
  • Western Kansas the traffic is light once west of Wichita. I started driving it out west to get off the boring and busy I70.
  • Thanks so much for all the good advice. We are not familar with this route so all the help is greatly appreciated.

    Janet
  • 50 is a good road for most of the state.You will be taking 54/400 after Dodge City clear through to Wichita.I would take 77 to 166 and head east that way.412 when we pulled on it last year was rough from I-35 to Tulsa.
  • JANETRUPP wrote:
    ...I'll listen to any suggestions you have and also looking for stops of must-sees along the route...
    We have driven US-50 through Kansas several times and several other parts of it across the country. I have found this US-50 website helpful. In Kansas, if you were a Gunsmoke fan, Dodge City is worth a stop. We really enjoyed the Middle of America in Kinsley. In Hutchinson there is the Cosmosphere and Space Museum and the Salt Mine Museum.
  • We have driven US 50 through Colorado several times in our coach, towing a fifth wheel, and travel trailer before that. Monarch is the only high pass, but is no problem if you drive sensibly. It is a beautiful, scenic route. Gunnison and Montrose are great little towns. Olathe has a really great little rv park called the Uncompahgre River Adult RV Park. And the sweet corn they grow is the best.
  • I've taken 50 from east of Dodge City to Grand Junction. I don't know about on into Wichita (which is a big city, for Kansas). I do know traffic on US-54/400 gets dense from about Andover west to the International Airport. In Wichita, there is a section of that 54/400 where the speed limit drops sharply while it still looks like freeway, a trap that catches my Wichita daughter from time to time.

    While I live along US-60, I don't use 60 to get to Wichita. Much of the section of 60 you would travel from US-77 is scenic highway through the Osage Nation, it is not necessarily good RV road, being rough in many places and having no shoulders along most of it, without even much grass verge between pavement and the quite deep drainage ditches.

    US-60 does not look so bad right out of Ponca City, but it gets worse as you get into the hilly country east of Pawhuska. US-60 also sometimes gets clogged with slow moving oversize loads. Just now they are hauling wind generator parts to build wind farms outside Pawhuska, but I've also gotten stuck behind drilling rigs and other large pieces of oilfield service equipment.

    Kansas has built much better two-lane roads than Oklahoma, and takes care of them. I usually travel US-77 down to US-166, using 166 to get east to where my need to go south finally puts me onto an Oklahoma highway, US-75 in my case for my trips to and from Wichita. US-75 actually is not too bad from Kansas to Tulsa, having been upgraded to four-lane divided in the 1990s, but it gets slow going through Dewey-Bartlesville because the developers have had forty years to build a whole new town on what used to be the Bartlesville bypass.

    To get to Wagoner from Wichita, I would take I-35 down (or US-77 down from Augusta) to US-412 (Cimarron Turnpike) taking that all the way across to Tulsa, then out US-51 (Broken Arrow Expressway - Muskogee Turnpike) into Wagoner.

    I know some people like to avoid the toll roads, but some of the routes that look like good alternatives (like US-60 from Ponca City across to US-69 down to Wagoner) are really bad alternatives either from road condition or the kind of traffic they carry.

    If you really don't want to pay tolls, or go through Tulsa, you could take US-166 all the way to Chetopa, then US-59/OK-2 down to Vinita, where you can pick up US-69 south to Wagoner. Coffeyville will slow you down on 166, for about the same distance as Bartlesville slows US-75, but not as many traffic lights. US-69 has some four-lane sections, but even those have been pretty well beat up by the heavy truck traffic.

    Along US-50, great places to visit include the Colorado National Monument, Gunnison (like a little Durango), Black Canyon National Park, the Curecanti National Recreation Area, Royal Gorge, and Bent's Fort NHP. US-50 basically follows the valley of the Gunnison River from Grand Junction to Monarch Pass, then the Arkansas valley into Kansas on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains.

    A little off the route we've discussed, I like to stop at the Henry Candy Factory in Dexter, Kansas. This family business is descended from the confectioner who created the O-Henry candy bar, and they are open every day, making candy on weekdays. You find Dexter by turning left off US-77 onto K-15/US-160, then following K-15 where 160 splits off.