R and J in the USA

First things first. We know that Montana is known as the Big Sky state and it deserves it. But, as Julie had pondered back in Montana how one state could claim the size of the sky for itself, the sky being as big as it is and covering the whole planet as it does, she had come to understand it really just comes down to how much of it you can see, how much the landscape below it frames it and what types of colors are visible in at as the sun and clouds travel through it. And there is nothing but beautiful sky in Montana, and a whole lot of it. That said, Kansas, in our experience, gives Montana a run for its money when it comes to gorgeous sky and at least deserves an honorable mention in the category. Every morning and every evening, without fail, especially when outside the bounds of any major city, Kansas was like a stage upon which the sun and the clouds would parade boisterously in all of their glory. There was more than one moment where a “Holy crap, that’s beautiful.” would be uttered by one or the other of us. What a wonderful gift to humanity that, no matter where you live, as long as you are above ground, we all get great seats to the show. Some spots, though, do seem to give even better views than others. We nominate Kansas to be on the list of prized seating for the big show.

We traveled through Kansas like a pinball travels through a pinball machine, bouncing from one end to the other and then back again. One of the fun parts of the trip is solving the ongoing puzzle of how to put it all together in a way that is logistically and physically manageable that gets us to certain places for certain events and either lands us in or squarely avoids certain weather. Within all of that, we always try our best to minimize our drive time and streamline our routes.

But, our choice to do a 5K in every state has dictated that each state’s itinerary has to, to some degree, be dictated by our 5K options, which sometimes makes for an, otherwise, inefficient path through the state. So it would be as we made our way through middle America. In the case of Nebraska and Kansas, just based on race availability, we would be doing both our Nebraska and Kansas 5K during our time in Kansas (as there were no races available during our Nebraska travel time that we were aware of), and both races would be happening on the eastern side of the states and near the end of our time in Kansas. And, because our next state on our itinerary would be Colorado, obviously located on the western side of Kansas, pinballing it would be. There may have been a more efficient way to drive through all 50 states and to see as much of each state as we have seen if we weren’t insistent on doing each state sequentially, rather than constantly bouncing from state to state based on what cities and sites were otherwise close to each other across state lines. Many points on our route, we find ourselves but 60 miles or less from a city we have traveled to months prior. But, no matter what way you slice it, there is no straight path to get through all 50 states, and certainly not if you are trying to get to as much of each state as possible. So, looping and lapping back is an inevitability. Here in Kansas, it would be more present than in any prior state. So, with our 5Ks on the east side at the end of our trip, that meant, we needed to visit the western parts of Kansas at the front end of our time there, make our way east towards the backend to do our 5Ks and then drive back west to get to Colorado. So, we put a lot of miles and hours of drive time on the books in our state #26.

We leapt over the midline of our trip, 5 months and 25 states in as we drove over the state line from Nebraska to Kansas. Nebraska had surprised us with landscapes beyond the open flat farmland that we had expected and Kansas would do the same. 

Our first stop in Kansas was called the Little Jerusalem Badlands. It is a fairly new state park as of 2018 and its name tells you just what to expect. It is, in fact, a miniature badlands. The whole of it can be gathered in one glance. It is ranch lands and beautiful fields of some kind of brownish red winter wheat in the periphery surrounding the geological folds of spires, cliffs and ravines that make up the badlands formations. We are not farmers, so we don’t actually know for sure what the crops surrounding the badlands formations were, but we do know they lent a beautiful hue to the vistas around them. The Little Badlands are chalk deposits that were left by a waterway that was originally flowing through here some multiple millions of years prior, now exposed to and eroded by wind and time. They were beautiful.

As is not too uncommon with such a packed schedule, we were getting in later than we thought and planned to stay at Historic Scott Lake Park about 20 minutes south of the Little Jerusalem Badlands. We wondered if we would need to return in the morning, though we weren’t keen on adding an extra 40 minutes of back and forth travel in the morning. As soon s we arrived and realized that the word “little” was entirely apropos, we decided that the 30 minutes we had before sunset would be more than enough for a visit. We hiked the short path towards the formations, noticed the chill in the air to be sharper than we had become accustomed to as a signal that perhaps we were headed into new weather and enjoyed the quiet as the only observable humans for miles. 

As we drove through Kansas’s flatlands, we were continuously impressed with the beauty of the landscapes. We’d see the occasional small windmill, and sometimes the larger ones along with small oil pumps peppered throughout various farm fields, rotating rhythmically as they plumbed the earth for the prized commodity.

We stayed a night at Historic Scott Lake State Park and grabbed a lakeside spot. The views were beautiful and Julie was thinking she’d knock her Kansas swim out right away until seeing more algae in the water than she was interested to dip herself in. 

Julie went for a run the next morning, her first midweek run in a while that was now possible thanks to having caught up on the blog and was mildly disappointed to see her body show more signs of fatigue as her heart rate crept up way too high despite her extremely slow pace. Alas, constantly managing adequate rest, relaxation and recovery is as much a part of trip planning and management as is arranging places to stay and mapping out driving routes. It is all part of the puzzle and the riddle that we are enjoying as part of pulling off this ambitious trip.

We decided to change up our planned itinerary a bit to be able to take in our first state in months where we could use our time not spent driving or visiting new sites to work on other projects or activities, and also, just to have little time to recover from what had been a steady push to catch up on the blog over the last months. We had originally planned to visit the Dorothy House located down south near the Oklahoma border and make it to Dodge City and Wichita before landing at Kanopolis Lake State Park that night. That would have us driving more than 6 hours in one day. Instead, we decided to stay in place and have a full morning. In addition to wanting to rest and have time to work on other things, we had the regular van life maintenance logistics to tend to as well – toilet emptying, grey water dumping, recycling, organizing gifts to be mailed home. We decided to forgo all of the day’s originally planned sites and just head the 3 hours to Kanopolis Lake State Park. It was a good decision, though Julie was lamenting not getting to see Kansas’s biggest city in Wichita with a total of 350,000 people. 

We headed to Kanopolis State Park and were delighted to find the lakeside campground was completely empty and we would get to have it all to ourselves. Julie was committed to getting her swim in every state and greeted the morning with a full body wetsuit, this time, putting her wetsuit booties and head cover on as well. When registering for our Kansas campsite, we learned a little bit about Kansas. We had to enter our social security number to secure a campsite which, apparently was a strategy to curtail the phenomenon of dads skipping out on their families. Does this mean Kansas has more of that happening in other states or is simply more committed than other states to stopping it? This we do not know. Nor do we know if it is an old problem whose beaurocratic system is still in place long after being needed, or if it is more needed than ever. We don’t know enough to draw a conclusion about what we learned, but we know, at the very least, it is something that the state of Kansas has taken seriously enough to make us prove that we are here without abandoning any children in the process. It’s interesting the different ways that traveling the country can provide education that you don’t expect. 

We loved our spot in Kanopolis Lake State Park and made our way to the nearby little-known gem just six miles away in the morning. Even the Kansans we met along the way hadn’t heard of it – Mushroom Rocks State Park. It is exactly what it sounds like…a set of rock formations that look like mushrooms. It was pretty neat and one of the wonderful unexpected found gems of travel. One spot that we missed that looked like a definite gem of unexpected beauty in Kansas was Monument Rocks. The pictures looked amazing and we were so close to them, but it never quite worked out to make the journey down the dirt road to see them. 

After we saw the Mushroom Rocks, we headed to Abilene to visit the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. We had stopped here right after purchasing our van in Boulder, Colorado in the late summer of 2022 during our drive home. We had already visited the library, the chapel where President Eisenhower and Mamie are buried and we had left our first visit wishing we’d had time to see the museum. So, out of all of the things we’ve said we wish we had more time, here is one that we got a chance to circle back around to see. But, alas, we found ourselves in the same position as before, not even having enough time to pour over the museum as much as we wanted to. It was a great museum and we both found it to be among the best we’d seen. We both took note of the same quote of Eisenhower’s as one of our favorites. You can read more about it in our Ruminations section.

We left Abilene for the second time wanting to return with more time to explore the museum and the town itself. 

Next stop, Topeka, KS, the state capital. Unfortunately, we had arrived too late to partake of the formal tour, including the one that took you up the 200+ to view the capitol dome. Nonetheless, we took in the stunning artwork and architecture where Kansas holds its legislative affairs. We ended up having two encounters worth writing about and you can read about them in our People Along the Way section.

We had been trying to get out of the capitol in time to get in to see the exhibits at the Brown vs Board of Education site right nearby that is now a National Historical Park. We missed the open hours but still made sure to drive by. Somehow, it is a powerful thing to stand near a place where powerful things in history happened that continue to reverberate in their memory and impact even though they are not happening there anymore. To simply sit in the van in a spot where there had been the confluence of so much victory, progress, hatred, small-minded vitriol and courage all mixed in one had an impact. 

We drove through Topeka’s main drag and headed the handful of hours drive to our Harvest Host for the night, after, of course, locating the closest boba tea in Topeka’s mall. We landed at our Harvest Host’s welcoming farm after dark and loved our stay. You can read about in our People Along the Way section.

The next morning, we would make the hour and a half drive back up into Nebraska for our Nebraska 5K just outside of Omaha that you can read about in our 5K section. After the race, we returned to our 26th state and made our way to Wamego, the town that had taken up the mantle in the early 2000’s as Kansas’s representative of Oz. In front of our parking spot was Toto’s Tacoz, Wamego’s Oz inspired Mexican restaurant. The streets were lined with shops that featured Wizard of Oz nostalgia in their themes. 

We went into the Oz Museum and toured the massive collection of Oz Memorobilia. Of course, Julie was already planning to have a Wizard of Oz viewing before leaving Kansas. We found out at the museum something that we had sensed from our travels might be the case. The woman who worked the desk explained to us how Wamego had taken up the Oz mantel even though Dorothy had never said where in Kansas, exactly she was from. She explained that Kansas small towns are struggling throughout the state and having the Oz Museum was an economic boon to Wamego, bringing in thousands of visitors each year. 

We ran into a group of women who were doing a half marathon in every state and had just run one that morning and had another the next morning, just like us (but a longer distance). They had been doing it over years, flying to different states for their race weekends and then heading home. 

After following the yellow brick road in the land of Wamego, we made the drive down to Wichita. We had made a few more itinerary tweaks and found a 5K race in Wichita on Sunday morning. Even though we had already paid for a race in Lawrence, the itinerary rearrangement suited us better and we considered it just an opportunity to make a donation to another cause, even though we wouldn’t be partaking in the race.

We pulled into a Cabella’s to park for the night at around 8PM after a day filled with hours of driving and headed to sleep.

The next morning, we headed into a park where we would run our Kansas 5K along with a bunch of four-legged friends at the “Who Let the Dogs Out 5K”. You can read about it in our 5K section.

Once again, our greed pulled us slightly off track, as we waited the hour and a half after the race to see if we won the raffle before hitting the road for our big truck across Kansas to make it to Colorado before bedtime. Before leaving Wichita, we made a quick drive through the city to get a brief sense of the place and found that it felt much like a western NY city. It reminded us in a lot of ways of a city like Buffalo. Though Wichita did not bring us any particular excitement, at least in what we had time to see, we enjoyed our time there and were glad we had gotten a chance to see it. 

With that, we hit the road and traveled the 6.5 hours on I-70 to get ourselves into our next state. By the time we arrived in Colorado, thanks to a time zone change and daylight savings, the clock said 7:30, but our bodies were still saying 9:30.

The drive through the flatlands of Kansas with farms and fields as far as the eye can see delivered pinch-me sunsets and a beautiful way to close up our time in another wonderful state that was fun, enriching and enjoyable to see. So far, there is not a state we can’t imagine returning to. We could see why Dorothy was so urgent to return to this one.