Kansas

If you had looked for me early this morning, you would have found me shaking uncontrollably in the Beast as I was checking my maps - is it REALLY that far across Kansas? This is going to take some time. Where is Toto when you need him? Did you know Toto was always referred to as a "he" in the movie, but was really a "she". Why?

I stopped in Topeka for a quick tour of the Brown vs. Board of Education NHS. They have remodeled the actual school that was one of the places that spawned the original lawsuit (by the time it reached the Supreme Court, several suits had been joined together) and use it as the Visitor's Center. It was an EXCELLENT exhibit, covering the entire civil rights movement, and well worth the visit.

Just down the road is Fort Riley, Kansas, much of which you can see from the freeway. It has a long history, stretching back to Custer. It was the home of the U.S. Calvary School, and the 9th and 10th Calvary Regiments (the black "Buffalo Soldiers"). More recently, it has served as the home of the 1st Infantry Division (the "Big Red One").

For many years, before the railroads extended into Texas, this stretch of Kansas also served as the terminus of the Chisholm Trail, where the great cattle herds of the southern plains were loaded on the rail lines following the Santa Fe and Smoky Hill Trails, then shipped east. Abilene was one of the bigger cattle towns and I stopped there for lunch. It is also the birthplace and boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower. I toured the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Center: his birth home, library, and memorial. As in most Midwest towns, there is a very beautiful mansion row as you enter Abilene, and it is one of the more beautiful ones I have seen. Absolutely marvelous restored and landscaped homes, maybe a hundred or so.

About milepost 340 on the freeway, I hit the "rain line", and the trees started disappearing. Ah, the famous plains of Kansas. Beautiful in their own right. Grain elevators. Open spaces. One thing for sure, there are a lot fewer trucks in Kansas than Indiana. Wonderful wildflowers. I could just imagine the roaming buffalo herds.

I stopped in Hays, Kansas, as I was losing the light and it was getting windy. I took a quick look at Fort Hays, another fort constructed to control the Indians in the last half of the 19th Century along the Santa Fe Trail.