hahahah.....I have known folks who considered murder and theft to escape Kansas! :coffeedrink: I've been there..its just as flat as you think. Not a place for a guy who likes hills and mountains.
Exactly. Mountains remind us of just how small we are relative this planet. Only a recent convert to this type of automotive shenanigans, I've always preferred to have mountains within eyesight, if only as such a reminder. Now, however, I'm looking forward to getting out and exploring the ones surrounding Phoenix. I can't get the Montero home fast enough!
PS: Funny story about Kansas flatness. Back in 2006, my wife and I drove my 97 Eagle Talon (a lowered sport-compact hatchback) from Phoenix to Kansas City for Christmas. (
pics) We made it to Oklahoma City the first day and had to crash for the night. Despite getting nearly 12 hours of sleep that night, we hadn't made it out of Wichita on the turnpike before my wife - who had never been to Kansas before - asked me, "Is this really all there is?" My reply was, "Pretty much until we hit Kansas City." She was snoring ten minutes later.
:smiley_drive:
I don't want to hijack Miguel's thread, though, so I would offer a couple thoughts on Kansas Escape, er,
Adventure Routes which might be of interest to overlanders. Departing Wichita...
+ to the SW, US54 (aka: Kellogg Drive as it crosses town if I remember right) will take you through the small towns that make Kansas great. Greensburg is along that route and has the world's deepest hand-dug well, which is pretty neat. I think the bulk of the town was wiped off the map a few years back in a major tornado and they've bene rebuilding with modern, green technologies. Could be an interesting place to explore today. This route takes you through cattle country in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles en route to the NE corner of New Mexico - Tucumcari. It's a nice, non-interstate drive with more local culture.
+ to the E, US54 passes through longtime speed trap, Eureka. Straight out of high school, I got popped for 97 in a 55 on one side of Eureka, then 80 on the other side, on my way to Missouri to visit a girlfriend. 54 passes through Fort Scott, which if I remember right, is an old frontier fort from back in Civil War times and a great place to discover what it really means to be a
Jayhawk. Additional novelty, 54 passes through the small town of Gas, so the whole family can pass gas, get gas in Gas, etc.. From there, it's just a hop-skip-&-jump to Springfield, Missouri, through some very pretty (hilly) country. Plenty of lakes and camping along the way down to Branson. Maybe drop down into NW Arkansas and return to Wichita via Tulsa for a 3-state run.
+ FINALLY, if you're remotely interested in space and aviation, barely an hour NW out of Wichita is the town where I graduated high school - Hutchinson. They have the
Cosmosphere, which has been said to be the best space museum in the country short of the Smithsonian in Washington DC. They have an SR71 Blackbird in the lobby (re-assembled at the local muni airport and towed across town back in 1997). They actually built the new addition to the museum around the airplane, it's so big. Just up the road from the Cosmosphere (literally) is/was a small, family-owned burger joint called "Bogeys," where they make incredible chili cheese fries and have over 100 milkshake offerings.
Sorry to go overboard on the comments, here, but this just seemed one of the few places I've seen thus far where I could actually hope to offer some help on this forum. Still quite the rookie!