This European Life: an Open Travelogue

bobDog

Expedition Leader
subscribed! You might just be a lot of fun! Welcome to the looney farm, the inmates can be kinda fun.
 

BeachBum

Observer
Dig your site. It's funny but I'm almost your opposite. Met my Spanish wife at Cal Poly SLO back in '98 and four years ago moved to Madrid. Just 6 months ago we moved up to Galicia, outside of La Coruña. León is a pretty cool city too, passed through my first time while driving back from a snowboarding weekend at San Isidro and again while mountain biking the Camino back in July '09. The stoned glass of the cathedral is some of most impressive I've seen.
 

Delibes

Drat, double drat!
Dig your site. It's funny but I'm almost your opposite. Met my Spanish wife at Cal Poly SLO back in '98 and four years ago moved to Madrid. Just 6 months ago we moved up to Galicia, outside of La Coruña. León is a pretty cool city too, passed through my first time while driving back from a snowboarding weekend at San Isidro and again while mountain biking the Camino back in July '09. The stoned glass of the cathedral is some of most impressive I've seen.

Amazing! Thanks for the compliments! I am a big fan of Gothic architecture and I have the feeling that Castile does not get visited enough compared to Barcelona, per say. Oh, if all of amazing culinary treasures were also revealed to more visitors, alas!

Anyway, straight to the point: I am currently in Wichita, and here is what has happened since Brooklyn!

 

DR1665

Gearheads United
Irony.

I've only recently discovered this community and begun to explore it. Today, I decide I want to spend my lunch hour living vicariously through those who embody the spirits of adventure and freedom embodied by the automobile. And here I find someone posting an update from "The Air Capital City." I worked two jobs for three years to escape Wichita just over a decade ago.

The grass is always greener, right? Subscribed to your blog, mate. Press on regardless.
 

bobDog

Expedition Leader
Irony.

I've only recently discovered this community and begun to explore it. Today, I decide I want to spend my lunch hour living vicariously through those who embody the spirits of adventure and freedom embodied by the automobile. And here I find someone posting an update from "The Air Capital City." I worked two jobs for three years to escape Wichita just over a decade ago.

The grass is always greener, right? Subscribed to your blog, mate. Press on regardless.
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.
 

DR1665

Gearheads United
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!
 

Delibes

Drat, double drat!
@DR1665. It is true that the grass is greener, but I still like the sloped grass of San Francisco. Too darn expensive, unfortunately. Wichita is the hometown of my business partner, Tyler, who is providing the ground for this opportunity to happen. And, being on the road most of the time, I cannot really complain! What I will say is that people are VERY nice here compared to NYC.

Thank you very much for all these places to see... I have heard great things about Greensburg, and thought we might feature the town in one of our episodes. I shall also visit the Cosmophere on my way to my mechanic! He is in Halstead, not far from Hutchinson.

Finally, after almost month an a half, I get to write something!

This European Life - The Life that I have chosen

 
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Delibes

Drat, double drat!
This post may be one of the most important ones I have written, if not the most important. My time in the US is almost up, so I have about six weeks to make a decision whether to stay and study some more, or exit this country though the Big Door down to Argentina.

Crossroads: PanAmerican or School?

 

bobDog

Expedition Leader
Find a South American university that allows camping and do both.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2
 

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