39 Days, 10 States, 2 Kids – The Flatlands
Waking up in Wichita, we were delighted that we were alive, and nothing terrible happened while we all slept in a stranger’s basement.
Not yet settling into a routine, since it was our first morning on the road, the kids argued over muffins and argued more as we loaded back into Jethro to start our day of driving. They are a pain in the ass, a lot of the time.
Unloading and loading each day should be a relatively painless process since we read online all about packing and how to best manage space. The reality of the situation however is that despite our planning, at the last minute we just threw all kinds of stuff in the back in a rush to get on the road.
Luggage in the rooftop box and the cargo area still in disarray, we set off down the road with the sun at our back. This day we’ll be on pavement, down US 54, through the flat plains to Liberal, KS.
Often described to us as dreadfully boring; the flat, treeless, and windy landscape was interesting to me in a certain sense. Not in a “I wish I could spend the rest of my life here” kind of way, but more of a “wow, this is really flat, windy, and dry, but modern mankind still managed to farm all of this, and build huge windmills” kind of way. More on the farming later.
There really is a whole lot of featureless landscape, and it makes me imagine what people thought when they were truly the first to arrive here over 10,000 years ago.
I also thought about lunch, so in a way, the native people, the settlers, myself, and the kids are pretty much the same.
After lunch in Pratt, KS, dealing with Alli’s stomach ache, and seeing Pratt’s famous hot and cold water towers, (only famous to people in Pratt) we continued down the road to see the worlds largest hand dug well.
Poor Alli 
Very Clever
It would be awesome to have the time and funds to travel and just ask people “What is cool to see around here?”, and then go see it for as long as it takes and move on to the next. There are just so many cool, odd things out there to see.
Our waitress at lunch told us about the hot and cold water towers, which was just a quick drive-by before we left Pratt, and she also told us about the Big Well Museum up the road in Greensburg.
Driving in to Greensburg seemed like the other small towns we had been passing through: big grain elevator, couple of churches, bank, gas station, etc. There were an odd number of empty lots with big concrete parking areas or pads right along the main road, but didn’t think much of it.
After dealing with the kids eye rolls about going to a museum about a well, we found our way a few blocks off the main road to the place. A newer building, with modern architecture seemed pretty out of place here. It actually seemed really out of place.
There were also a few newer homes, and a large amount of empty lots. The lots had grass and sidewalks, some even had sidewalks up to where a house might go.
Entering the museum, before we even got to the counter to pay and go see the big well, we were struck by a huge aerial photo, that, in one glimpse, explained the towns oddities.
On May 4th, 2007, at around 10:00 P.M. most of the 1,400 residents of this Kansas town had heeded the strong tornado warnings and took shelter as an EF5 tornado approached the town.
Text of the 9:41 PM SVS from NWS Dodge City. (Iowa Environmental Mesonet)
Having been on the ground for several miles already, the tornado had grown to 1.7 miles wide with winds of 205 mph as it completely engulfed the 1.5 mile wide town.
With 11 people killed by the tornado, and more than 60 injured, the forecasting, monitoring, and warning technology was praised for saving many more lives. 95% of the towns structures were destroyed.
The lady working at the museum pointed to the house where she took shelter. It is hard to imagine and comprehend.
For a more detailed explanation of the whole tornado outbreak, you can read this article – https://www.ustornadoes.com/2017/05/04/may-4-2007-night-maps-greensburg-kansas-redrawn/
The museum had debris from the tornado, along with area history, a big meteorite, and of course the worlds largest hand dug well, which after seeing, the kids stopped rolling their eyes about.
Museum tour complete, we walked across abandoned lots in the 96 degree heat, punctuated by steady hot wind, to the city hall/county museum/ ice cream parlor. We had some ice cream and learned of a round barn in nearby Mullinville.
The round barn was in the middle of nowhere, with no one within miles of us, and just had a donation box inside. Had we known that later in the trip, while in Oregon, we’d be able to tell someone “That’s not a big round barn, you should see the one in Mullinville, Kansas” we would have left an extra dollar in the donation box.
Liberal, KS provided us with hotel lodging, food, and a much larger than expected airplane museum. In fact, the nations 5th largest air museum was one of Jake’s favorite things on the trip, and not just on the morning of day 3, but even when the trip was over.
We spent a couple of hours checking out all of the planes, including an old FedEx cargo kept outside, that’s most entertaining feature was the dozens of pigeons that flew out of the engines, landing gear bays, and any other hole in the plane that birds could fit in.
Having dodged the potential bird poop, we hopped in Jethro and set out back onto the plains. Today we would be leaving the pavement behind and getting a grittier feel for the area that is most famous for the tragic dust bowl.
Heading in to no mans land was the same flat featureless terrain of the last day and a half, but since we were on gravel, clay and sand now, without passing people or cars for long periods of time, it certainly felt different. While not in the desert, a breakdown out here with no air conditioning, or shade could be a real problem. Not to mention the rattlesnakes.
Off pavement, and with very straight roads, we let Alli drive for a long while. Jake also got to do some driving sitting on my lap. We kept Alli under 35 mph or so due to the loose terrain, and the concerns noted above if she went off and hit the random telephone pole or anything. She has experience sliding the Miata – https://normalfam.com/index.php/2018/02/02/alli-learning-to-drive-manual/ but Jethro is a little more top heavy.
We stopped to see the CO, OK, KS three state marker, and Jake got out to randomly jump rope while I took a picture of the vast emptiness.
In Boise City, OK we had arrived in one of the most remote towns on our trip; there is nothing around. We were staying in part of someones home, so we settled in and figured out what we should do. Naturally this involved hollering at the kids for arguing over some Cheez-Its first.
The town has a dust bowl museum that is said to be good, let’s go see that. More eye rolls than the big well.
It was pretty cool, with tons of history. They even relocated an old school house, train station, and dust bowl period house to the property.
There was so much static in the air from the dust storms in the 1930’s that people hung a chain out of the trunk of their cars so it could drag the ground and discharge the static. Otherwise when you went to open the car door, it would shock you enough to knock you down. It was a terribly dreadful time for a lot of reasons other than getting shocked by your car.
Speaking of farming and modern mankind’s achievements earlier, it also contributed to the whole dust bowl. As it turns out, the vegetation that was here for tens of thousand of years before we showed up, had adapted to grow in the plains’ dry windy conditions over thousands of years. We tilled it all up and planted crops. That didn’t work when it got really dry and windy. Over 100 million acres were destroyed by wind erosion.
Yawning? That’s how the kids felt too. At least there was a see-saw.
Alli and I walked out to Jethro to grab some water and there was a big brown snake by the front door. The lady working there assured us it was not a rattlesnake, but let us know that if we did see one, we’d be expected to shoot it. That’s how it’s done out there.
They were closing up at 4:30 but unlocked the buildings that housed the cars and the tractors, and told us we could stay as long as we wanted, as long as we would turn off the lights and lock up when we were done. I guess we seemed like nice enough people.
Being alone in the old metal building with the roof rattling from the always present winds outside was eerie to me. I also knew storms were building up nearby, and the Greensburg tornado (from 11 years prior) had me freaked out a bit. Nonetheless we checked out the old cars, carriages and tractors before locking up and heading back to the house.
Since we were about as far west as you could be in the central time zone, sunset wasn’t until after 9:00 and it didn’t get dark until after 10:00, so we walked around town, and let the kids run around the track and play at the school ball fields. They had their hiking sticks because our hosts told us there could be large stray dogs. We never ended up seeing any dogs that Alli didn’t pet.
In the morning we hit the gravel towards New Mexico and Colorado. More flatness to start the day, before getting into rolling hills and then the Mesas. When we stopped at a point where we were crossing the Santa Fe Trail, Jake broke out into more random jump roping while we read the history. He likes his jump rope. We went on to see dinosaur tracks in an old creek bed that we found out about before heading to an old volcano.
Reaching the top of Capulin Volcano in New Mexico, we could look back over the plains we had been driving across.
Making it to the funky little town of Trinidad, CO in the foothills of the mountains, we stayed in a La Quinta next to Walmart. I didn’t take any good pictures. Tomorrow we head into the mountains.
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