Tourists, grandkids and hometown girls: Everybody loves Dodge City

 Sean Castleman could have been at summer camp, splashing in a big lake and sitting around a campfire with a pack of other boys, but he wasn't.
    Instead, he was in Dodge City.
    "My mom gave me the choice of going to camp or visiting Dodge, and I chose Dodge" said Sean. "I didn't have to think too hard. Dodge is better. And  get to see my grandpa too."
    Sean's grandfather, Kirk Castleman lives here in Dodge, where he serves as the minister of the Church of Christ.
    "Yes, I live here, but Dodge becomes more special for me when I get a chance to look at it through Sean's eyes," said Castleman.
     Sean's grandfather beamed every time he looked at the boy. The tired, happy pair were headed home after an afternoon spent poking around the Old West storefronts on Front Street and looking at the Boot Hill museum displays.
    Sean hails from Houston and was on his first summer visit to Dodge City.
    "I've seen Dodge in the winter, but not in the winter," he said. "It's way better in the summer! We've done so many great things — we saw the gunfight, and the Dalton Gang museum, we went to the rodeo and All 4 Fun, Doggie Day, the Quack Attack and Boot Hill. It's been really fun."
    Asked if he would recommend Dodge City to other kids, Sean waxed rhapsodic.
    "Any kid who likes the old West, horses, rodeos, gunfights and cowboys will love it here - and they should definitely come," he said. "They'll be glad they did.

Back home to say good-bye
    John Stovall was also glad to be on Front Street, but for him, the experience was bittersweet.
    Stovall had come home to Kansas to say goodbye. He said that he'd reached a point in his life at which he wanted to be closer to his daughter, so he'd decided to move to New Mexico. In fact, Stovall had just returned from Albuquerque and had stopped off for one last visit to Dodge.
    "Now I'm heading up to my home in Brookville and packing all my things," he said. "It was nice being here in Dodge. We went to the Boot Hill Museum, where I bought a couple of sheriff's badges for my little grandnephews. We had a good shrimp dinner at the Hong Kong Cafe."
    Stovall looked around the old historic district a bit wistfully.
    "It really makes you feel like you've stepped back into the past," he said, "I'm glad I have something to remember it by. I bought a little pin that says 'Boot Hill' on it. I'll wear it on the train back to Albuquerque."

A different landscape
    Lisa Lassater was visiting Dodge from her home in St. Louis, but she saw nothing that surprised her, and didn't expect to. Lassater grew up under these skies, and she's as familiar with the vast blue arc above southwestern Kansas as any farm kid who ever looked up from a field of wheat.
    That's why Lassater returns every summer to the Minneola land her brother farms, where she's surrounded by relations both varied and numerous. When you're  lucky enough to have eight brothers and sisters, there are usually more than enough nieces and nephews to go around.
    "You'll never see stars like these in St. Louis," said Lassater. "Sometimes when I'm in the city and I think of Kansas, it's the night sky I miss the most. So when I come back, I just look up at it and sort of drink it in."
    Lance Tilton, a friend and colleague of Lassater's who'd just pulled into town from St. Louis, said that the terrain between here and St. Louis had provided some  dramatic visual moments. A professional photographer, Tilton said that the relationship between the land and the sky changed faster and faster the further west he got.
    "Finally, the land became like a vast mosaic that was almost a mirror of the sky," Tilton said. "You never forget a sky like that."
    The two friends climbed into Tilton's car for the last leg of the trip — the road that would take them to a farm in Minneola, where Lassater's family was waiting to welcome her home.

Reach Claire O'Brien at (620) 408-9931 or e-mail her claire.obrien@dodgeglobe.com.