Crossing Kansas

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Today was to have been the great leap forward -- a dash West to see how much of the Great Plains I could cross before dark. The early pioneers must have had a similar feeling -- measured in weeks rather than hours. My route (US 50) follows the Santa Fe Trail down to Dodge City and then over into New Mexico. I did want to make it to Great Bend, site of Pawnee Rock which was a fixture along the trail.

But I lost my way, wandering through the low hills which border the MIssouri, an area settled by Germans who have kept their traditions and towns. Very beautiful. Reminded me of the Driftless region in southern Wisconsin. Hermann, settled in the 1830s, was clean and orderly and decorated with flags in remembrance of September 11. Out of character, however, were the large red brick county courthouse, modeled on the Capitol, and the Opera House. As I tried to figure out how to photograph them I was joined by a gentleman steeped in local history. He explained how, after the Missouri Compromise, the population grew rapidly. Counties were established with their capitals along the river, and the borders stretching out West in straight lines to the edge of the state. As the land was occupied, the original county was sectioned off. Now Hermann, originally the seat for a much larger Gasconade County, was left with a buildings that far outweighed their influence. Probably true elsewhere as well.

Flags in Hermann were at half mast, and the Veterans memorial was decorated in remembrance of the 9-11 attack.

Good old Route 50 also took me through Sedalia, MO, where Scott Joplin lived and became famous.

In the effort to make it to Great Bend that evening, I dined in a truck stop in Emporia KS, and headed West into the night. Surprisingly, all along the road lights burned illuminating the tanks and valves of oil and gas wells and pipelines filled by fracking.

Days Travel - Washington MO to Great Bend KS : 483

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Photos

West into the night
-- something I don't do often.