A Road Less Traveled on the Great Plains of Kansas

All things must pass, and so it is with western road trips.  The road points east on Colorado’s Interstate 70 run through the mountains, one of the few stretches that avoids an Interstate’s dash-lined trance. 

Glenwood Canyon remains a marvel, a place of awe both for the snow-capped highlands, and the engineering that shoehorned the highway through the mountain gaps.  I-70 toeholds its way above the Colorado River then rambles by the clustered condo towns and resorts of Eagle, Vail, Frisco, and Silverthorne that load their traffic on the road.   The expressway finally descends inexorably to the flatlands where the drive to Denver turns into a downhill, high-speed slalom course of vehicle weaving until it slows bumper-to-bumper through the City. 

This length of road from resorts to metropolis conjures The Tragedy of the Commons.  Too many have seen nirvana, and want a piece of their own. There seems to be no abatement in construction.  The Crane roosts as Colorado’s new ‘state bird’, its presence seen everywhere.   Crawling through sprawling Denver’s traffic disabuses any thought of vacation.   Commuters wear game faces.

The interstate finally reaches open spaces beyond Aurora, a word meaning dawn, where morning first meets that western city.   A new world also dawns in the opposite direction with eastbound sedans, SUVs and semis vying for position on a competitive road of utter interstate monotony, where maintaining maximum speed and position remain the sole and paramount objective.   Tall, monopole billboards litter the road with a commercial face that seeks a place in our wallets.

Forty miles later, I-70 bends in a southeasterly march for 50 miles before it straightens east again in a crow-fly direction for 500 miles of uninterrupted, four-lanes of pavement to Kansas City.   But at this bend of the road at Strasburg, a road less traveled forks off the expressway, and continues due east via U.S. Route 36.

This wondrously empty two-lane highway allows for the means to hightail it at an unencumbered 70 MPH, a shrinking back road commodity with our ever-expanding population.   Exploratory travelers seek them out.  These old U.S. routes more closely follow the contours of the land as opposed to interstates that scour the land in an acre-wide swath of concrete and uniformity.

This High Plains vehicular trail affords uncluttered views in all directions.    The open spaces fill one’s head as the retreating sun behind spreads its afternoon yellow light across empty flat lands. Billboards conspicuous by their absence.

Route 36 runs right on through the villages rather than by-passing them; slowdowns drop speeds to 30 per as the mind speeds up to absorb lonely towns where time slows down.   For long stretches, the paved path remains devoid of traffic with no one seen to share the road.

Something intangible—almost like trying to describe a cloudless, azure sky beyond saying it’s powdered-blue—exists in the wide-open expanse of the treeless, arid steppe.   Traversing this immense empty land in splendid isolation on a two-lane highway proves a decompression tonic. 

The endless Plains broad scope of land closes out all negative thoughts that crowds one’s mind, and instead offers a blank slate on which to sketch fresh ideas and re-order perspective.   This wide-open motorway extends a trip’s life force in a way no homebound interstate ever could.   

On the map, Colorado appears square, Kansas oblong.  But where the two states abut, they mirror the other as geographic twins that straddle either side of an arbitrarily drawn border.  Only the signs differ:  One declares “Leaving Colorado”; the other announces “Entering Kansas”.

The Sunflower State collects pejoratives from I-70 travelers who curse its’ 400 plus mile length as they covet the start of vacation beyond its’ borders, or yearn for home afterwards.    They find the race home via that non-descript interstate mind numbing.  In their haste, they miss the chance to discover the Land of Ah’s.

Located in Kansas’ far northwest corner, St. Francis serves as the governing seat of vacant Cheyenne County.  The town reports a population of 1,263 though one remains hard-pressed to count a dozen during a slow-down drive through that takes less than 90 seconds.

The time zone drawn at the Kansas line moves the clock up, but the sun ignores the newly added hour as it descends towards the horizon at an unhurried rate.   The High Plains absorbs scorching summer temperatures, but the evening’s cloudless skies allow for a quick surrender of the daytime heat.   

Gravel roads that connect hardscrabble farms periodically intersect Route 36.  A turnoff onto one of those intersects provides a place to halt, lift the hatch, sit the bumper, munch on trail mix, and watch the setting sun. 

A weathered farmer passing by on a tractor on that same gravel road stops to ask if all okay.    He wistfully concurs about the pleasant evening, and as if reminding himself to slow down, briefly pauses from his daylong toil to watch the sun disappear below the horizon’s distant flat line.  For a brief time, two dissimilar men gaze west at the orange-tinged sky, and silently appreciate the simple joy of living.

Evening turns to night brightened by a waxing moon that illuminates thoughts from William Heat-Moon: 

When you’re traveling, you are what you are, right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

In Norton County, a back road leads to Prairie Dog State Park, which offers a transit’s one-night home on the range, a place to set the cot and sleep under the stars and the setting crescent moon.  The subtle aromatic Kansas air stills concerns of loons and maniacs disturbing an open-air slumber.   Deep sleep til dawn holds off any dreams of rueful yesterdays or angst about the morrow.

Reference to the atlas—always a tactile version—shows Phillipsburg, aptly named for the Phillips County seat, as a dot on the map and a probable place to nosh on up the road.  Located at the crossroads of Routes 36 and 183, and the old Rock Island rail line crossing, the town provisions a population of 2,337, enough folks to support a café located on the town square that surrounds the handsome county courthouse.

Jim Morrison of the Doors sang:

People are strange, when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly, when you’re alone
Women seem wicked, when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven, when you are down.

But nothing strange or wicked about the easy-goers and codgers perched on chairs surrounding the group table to graze and kibitz at a café where everyone knows everybody.  They eye newcomers like one views a curio so that an interloper feels neither odd nor out of place as compared to sitting anonymously at a city eatery.  Welcomed victuals of bacon and eggs with hot coffee remain standard fuel anywhere.

Exiting town, the car veers south on Route 183, then turns east again on Sunflower State Highway 9.  This lovely road runs along a crease of the Republic River watershed, a mostly dry watercourse that collects the runoff.  For some geographic reason, the rain waters the land more liberally here.   The small measure of added moisture makes the green more vibrant, the trees more frequent, which rouse an internal song in the spirit of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass lauding morning’s glory.

Highway 9 merges with US Route 24 and runs through Cawker City, home of the world’s largest ball of twine.   An old-fashioned cylinder water tower with its peaked rooftop proudly bears the rural community’s name as it looks down upon the town’s museum-piece gas station and a one-room, story book Carnegie library. 

US Route 24 parts ways with Highway 9 at Beloit, a small berg preserved in a time warp, filled with structures built of the native Kansas limestone, including its stately courthouse and surrounding town square.  Nearby, the twin-spired St. John’s Catholic Church and School built of that same washed out taupe or grayish brown stone impart a sense of permanence and noble bearing.  Unlike its’ urban cousins, these rural churches remain the focal point of communities as evinced by a major rehabilitation underway at a large cost for a small congregation.

The elevation in Kansas descends imperceptibly in its’ 400 mile width.  At its far western reaches, the state’s elevation exceeds 4000 feet, while the southeastern section of the state dips below 700 feet above sea-level.  Conversely, the amount of precipitation increases west to east, which enhances farm production.

The comedienne Ron White once cracked that those on Santa Fe and Oregon trails who settled in Kansas were ‘quitters’, wisecracking that they had enough of the trail and declared: ‘That’s far enough for me.’  Funny joke, but hardly accurate.  Those settlers recognized good, tillable land when they saw it. 

The rich Harney silt loam covers almost four million acres in west and central Kansas, which along with other rich prairie soils make the state numero uno in wheat production.  In late Spring, the lush winter wheat fields of green turn into those amber waves of gold that we sing about in God Bless America.  The silos filled with nature’s beneficence can be seen along the roads and rails everywhere in the Sunflower State.    As a local sign declares:  “One Kansas farmer raises enough food to feed 155 people PLUS YOU!“

An increased bounty means more prosperous farms that in turn support larger, neighboring populations.  Route 24’s traffic builds with it.   No longer wide-open, the road proves slower, but remains too interesting to yield to the thrall of the Interstate’s addicting speed a mere 25 miles to the south.

Onward towards Manhattan, but by-passed via back roads out of Clay Center to avoid traffic snarls.  Then, a crossover of Turtle Creek Lake, linking up with southbound Sunflower 99 that runs through the Flint Hills farther on down the road. This near treeless, undulating, ‘flint-filled’ land impedes the plow, so much of that land remains in pre-settlement blues-stem pastoral splendor.  Alas, meandering has limits.   Eastbound remains the intended general direction on a course that one might figuratively describe as a cardinal’s oblique fluttering as opposed to the colorless crow’s straight-line flight along the interstate. 

Back on Route 24, the road passes through towns more often.   St. Mary’s Academy and College resides in the town that assumed its name. The school’s web page notes:  “St. Mary’s first mission was to serve the spiritual needs of the American Indians, especially the Potawatomi.  As an early outpost on the Oregon Trail, St. Mary’s missionaries soon found themselves ministering also to the white settlers.”   The town retains a sense of permanence with numerous ‘old school’ buildings and churches, one hundred year plus structures that cannot be replicated today.

Route 24 finally meets up with Interstate 70 and U.S. Route 59 at Lawrence, home of Kansas University.  KU, and its rival Kansas State, temper the State’s conservatism with a surprising strain of populism.  That liberalizing tendency took root long ago in the mid-1850’s when the territory’s settlers rejected slavery and repulsed the border-ruffians in a precursor to the Civil War.   

A mere 30 years after that fratricidal war, basketball’s creator James Naismith founded the KU basketball program.   The Jayhawks nest at Allen Fieldhouse, an old-school arena and college basketball mecca.  Their cult-like fans support the team with a chant “Rock Chalk Jayhawk”, a transposition of “chalk rock,” found in limestone bedrocks located in the central and western parts of the state. 

The road loses its rural aspect when it approaches the Missouri border as urban sprawl crowds the road from all direction. Though technically still within the state’s borders, one can almost hear Dorothy tell Toto: “I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore.”  

An arbitrarily drawn state line looms ahead, and begs the question asked by W.C. Fields, as the lost Professor Henry R. Quail in the classic movie, International House:  “Is this Kansas City, Kansas; or Kansas City, Missouri?”