24 hours.
1,000 miles.
Run-ins with the police, wild animals, wild fires, and a heck of a lot of wrong-turns on roads you don’t want to get lost on.
But I’ll get to all that.
Drove to western Kansas late last-night and crashed around midnight at a dive motel above a sports bar. This most certainly was a bad idea; music was blasting until 2am, and that was followed by occasional screaming and door slamming. The whole place was a classy establishment, with almost every light bulb smashed out, smokey halls, and a front desk attendant with three fro picks in his hair. I think I’ll sleep in the car next time.
I left Hays, Kansas at 5am for a two-and-a-half hour trek to the outskirts of Grinnell, in hopes of finding their salt formations in time for sunrise. While the first 45-minutes were fine, the next two hours were a challenge; road closures blocked my route south, back-roads listed on my maps did not actually exist or were otherwise impassable, and the roads I did find were definitely meant for 4WD trucks only.
Roads I did not want to break-down on
For much of these dirt roads, small birds flew alongside my car, and occasionally deer and other wild animals ran along side as well. After an hour on these back roads, I finally made enough lucky turns to find the formations just in time for sunrise:
I was miles from civilization and was able to sit and enjoy my surroundings in peace. Birds constantly flew up to me with a curious eye, and all around me were deer playing in the fields. It was absolutely stunning. After an hour, I decided to start heading towards my next stop.
I was near the border of Colorado, but decided head back east instead. It was about that time when I thought to myself, this is the kind of trip where I will get pulled over for the first time. The car didn’t have cruise control, it was 100% flat and wide-open and therefore impossible to judge speed, and of course I was already 500 miles down in 12 hours. Well, about five minutes later I got pulled-over for 75mph in a 70–I don’t know what it is with the mid-west but five-over in the Northeast is considered dangerously slow, not speeding. Anyways, I started talking with the State Trooper about sights to photograph along my way back. Then we talked about my job. Then my childhood. Then my southern accent before he finally sent me on my way with just a warning.
It took me a few minutes to realize the real reason he pulled me over.
Where I was, the only vehicles on the road were tractor trailers and the extremely muddy trucks of the locals. Suddenly the officer sees a sparkly-white foreign car stroll by with out-of-state plates, windows completely down and the driver (hooded and wearing sun-glasses) in an all-out headbanging fit to some crappy Top 20 radio station. It was probably at this exact moment that he thought, “well, that ain’t right.”
Before putting on his lights, he pulled up along-side my car and probably noticed that I was driving in the exact opposite direction of Texas (where my plates indicated I was from) and despite being far from home incredibly early in the morning, my car was 100% empty. The first questions I was asked after he stopped me were: Where are you going this early in the morning? If you aren’t Texan, who’s car is this? You are 600 miles from your hotel at 8am and all you have is a camera and the clothes on your back? I’m pretty sure he thought I was a drug runner. Anyways, after that initial confusion, we had a great chat and I get the feeling he was happy to see someone from the east coast actually being interested in touring around in the middle of nowhere (you know you are in Kansas when you pass a billboard that reads “Applebee’s is open late! Exit to the right in 82 miles!”)
On the way back across I-70, I stopped again in Hays to go see the fort where Dancing With Wolves was shot. I didn’t see Kevin Costner, which was a bit of a disappointment. I did however get to pet some buffalo I found (in actuality, they are American Bison) which was a first for me Unfortunately, I didn’t get any great pictures of Buffy The Hay Slayer (shown below) because I try to make a habit of not dying before 11am in the morning.
I've seen roadkill move faster than this guy
Impulsively, I decided to head to Wichita, Kansas. As I continued this long-trek, I occasionally stopped to travel back roads, visit the local shops (favorite gas-station t-shirt: “Kansas Farmers: What we plant in shit, you eat!”), or tour the miles and miles of wind turbine farms (which required a lot of trespassing and wasn’t worth it at all).
As is the way of life out here--every. single. sign. has bullet holes in it
What was worth it was my stop in a rural sandwich shop, where I was delighted to find that they decided to place the only mirror in the bathroom along the side of the urinal. This meant that (a) using the urinal felt extremely voyeuristic and (b) in order to check one’s physical appearance, one would have to bend down over the urinal in order to see anything
I took pictures of it until my sandwich was ready.
Wichita was a great city to walk through, though it was also quite the experience; one block would be extremely poor, the next would be ritzy parks, the next would be abandoned buildings, and then once again followed by some gorgeous buildings. They also placed statues of horses, children, and just general objects all along the sidewalks downtown. It felt slightly curious to be standing at a crosswalk next to a bronze statue of a man reading the newspaper. He was shorter than me though, so that was a plus.
For the drive back to Missouri I went through Strong City in order to traverse the tall grass prairies and to chase the wildfires. Along side the road at one point I found a horse roaming the fields, and he was beyond thrilled to get my attention.
I found a horse along one of the back roads and stopped to pet him (which appeared to make his day) before continuing until I found the best place to inhale as much wildfire smoke as possible.
I got about two pictures off before and ran up to me and demanded a massage
When I finally managed to pull myself away from him, I continued on through the prairies, which were half black and burned and half green and thriving:
I drove through miles and and miles of these small wild fires
All-in-all, one heck of a great day traveling through the plains. I may not have made it to Oklahoma or Colorado–despite being very close–but 1,000 miles in 24 hours is a respectable amount of traveling.
Closing thoughts: after one full-day of the radio, I heard “I’mma Be” by the Black Eyed Peas eight (8) times, followed up by “Soul Sister” seven (7) times, and trailed by probably five other songs tied at six (6) plays. The fact that I therefore spent over an hour of my day today only listening to “I’mma Be” and “Soul Sister” is incredibly disturbing.
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