Left Burlington early and headed east on I-70. Burlington is about 10 miles west of the Kansas/Colorado state line, so I was quickly into Kansas. If you've never been to Kansas, this is pretty much what most of the state looks like:
This was taken on I-70 near Goodland, Kansas, the first settlement of any size in Kansas coming from the West. Most of the scenery in the first 350 miles inside Kansas looked pretty much like this:
In the background, you can see irrigation equipment, which consists of a well dug in the field and an irrigation system that moves in a circle on wheels as it sprays water down at the level of the crops. Consequently, the fields are circular, not rectangular, for the most part.
I also thought it interesting that I saw NO wheat fields. Lots of corn, quite a lot of sunflowers (Kansas is the Sunflower State), but I had expected to see wheat fields everywhere. Maybe they're planting corn to produce ethanol now??
I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it, but one of the more intriguing sights along the way was "The World's Largest Prairie Dog Community" complete with "The World's Largest Live Prairie Dog." Drat, starting to wish I had stopped to take that one in.
I passed through Russell, KS (home of Bob Dole), Salina (formerly one of the hubs for shipment of cattle eastward by railroad), Abilene (Dwight Eisenhower's home and location of his library and museum), and finally, Kansas City (Kansas and Missouri...both of them). I wish I had had time to stop to see some of the sights, but I wanted to get as far east as I could today.
Tomorrow, it's down to Villa Ridge, MO to visit with my Uncle Glenn and Aunt Gladys. Glenn is the sole remaining sibling of my Mother and is 77 years old. Monday, it's on to Dayton, OH and then Tuesday...home!
Miles today: 451. Total: 11,286.
