Since I (Alex) am not a full blown adult with a real job yet
I still get summer vacation. However
since I am a grad student the powers at be decided we didn’t need three months
of summer vacation but that three weeks would suffice. Therefore my summer break has come and gone
already. When we started classes again
this past week we all wanted to hear about the adventures of our classmates
over break. One went backpacking in
Europe, another spent time in Alaska, someone
else got married and spent her honeymoon in Costa Rica. The traveling I did in my three weeks off
wasn’t quite as exciting but still entertaining never the less—and I could just
tell that my classmates were jealous of my great stories.
My first trip was a tour of
southeast Kansas. My mom and I were on our way to visit my
grandmother in the Joplin, Missouri area and we decided to take a
different route than we usually do. This
route took us through Medicine Lodge, home of Carrie Nation who was against the
use of alcohol and spent her free time taking a hatchet to bars. Next we drove through Sharon, KS
home of Martina Mc Bride. In Wellington I got the
chance to see where my mom grew up during her childhood. The next town was Elk Falls—probably the
highlight of the trip. Elk Falls
has a population of 107 and is the self-proclaimed World’s Largest Living Ghost
Town. If that isn’t enough of a claim to
fame, it is also the outhouse capitol of Kansas. We drove down Main Street (or what is left of it with
all the potholes) and saw at least 4 outhouses.
There is an outhouse tour as well—the sign says that “the tour is a gas”
but we passed up on that. Speaking of
gas, we were in need of some—the automotive kind that is. The gas gauge said we had 65 miles of fuel
left and the next decent size town was 68 miles away. Elk
Falls didn’t have a gas
station so we drove on. The next town
was Longton—no gas here either but it is supposedly the white-tail deer capital
of Kansas. We then cruised into Moline
which had a gas station—much to my mother’s relief and is also home to the
oldest swinging bridge in Kansas. This was another quick stop so I could walk
across it although I was slightly disappointed in its swinginess- which
apparently isn’t a word. For the next
few miles in the Flint Hills I had to keep Mom from jumping out of the car to
steal rocks from pastures and fence lines for a Bible school craft
project. (Bible school craft teachers
will stop at nothing to get their supplies—through the years I have been
dumpster diving for pop bottles and eating large amounts of oatmeal and peanut
butter so she could use the empty containers.
I knew the idea of getting arrested for trespassing and stealing probably
wasn’t going to keep her from those rocks.)
The next point of interest was Columbus
which was where Mom went to high school so I got to see the track where she had
an unfortunate run-in with a hurdle during PE class and the street where all
the cool kids dragged Main in the summer.
This trip had been plenty of
excitement for me and I didn’t think it would be possible to top the excitement
of the Elk Falls outhouses but as we turned the
corner to my grandma’s that changed.
People were lining the road, police were everywhere, and there was a
gigantic cargo plane at the airport. We
stopped at pickup something for dinner and found out that President Obama was
coming to town to speak at the Joplin
High School graduation
since it had been 1 year since the tornado.
While we were there Air Force One flew over and we couldn’t cross the
street since it was blocked off so we stood around and watched the presidential
motorcade drive past which was pretty cool.
(It was less cool and more of an inconvenience later that evening when
we wanted to go somewhere but had to wait since the motorcade was headed back
to the airport and the roads were blocked off again.)
The other half of my tour of Kansas was to the
northwest part of the state. My
boyfriend grew up in that part of the state so we were headed to his hometown
for the weekend. Our original plans were
to stop and see the Garden of Eden in Lucas,
KS which consists of a collection
of concrete statues a Civil War veteran made.
However, it was raining so we opted for something indoors instead. We stopped in Victoria at the Cathedral of the
Plains. This is one of the 8 Wonders of
Kansas (and yes there are more than 8 wonders in Kansas for those of you who may be wondering
that). It is a gorgeous limestone church
built by the families of the parish in the early 1900s. The size is impressive and inside there are
numerous stain glass windows, wood cravings, and a large altar. We then traveled on to Hays to visit the Sternberg Museum which is full of fossils that
were discovered in the region. Other
highlights of the trip included seeing my first rattlesnake in the wild at a
state park and participating in the Philipsburg Riverless River Festival Run (a
spoof off of Wichita’s
River Festival). I did find it ironic
that while running in the Riverless Run I crossed a creek three times. Philipsburg is also home to the largest rodeo
in Kansas. While it wasn’t rodeo weekend, the PBR
(professional bull riders) was in town so we watched some bull riding as
well. In traveling from northwest
portion of the state back to Kansas City—you can
see a lot of Kansas in 6 hours of driving—I
got to see one of my favorite Kansas tourist
sights—the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker City.
So there you have it—my tour of Kansas and many of its
superlatives.
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