Sep. 3, 2009
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Kansas Isn't Flat--at Least, Not the Part I Saw
All my life I've heard how flat Kansas is. How you can see for miles and miles, right to the horizon. So when we started into Kansas I thought it must be so because their welcome sign was very . . . flat.
As we drove through I kept waiting for it to be flat. While there was certainly some flat areas, I could always see a hill or two or three, somewhere. I think maybe I was taking people a little too literally when they said that Kansas was flat.
We had a mission in Kansas. Two in fact. First up was Dodge City.
Dear Man really wanted to go to Boot Hill. It was a very good museum, with a movie to watch, a reproduction of Dodge back in the early years, a shoot out at high noon, old-time photos, a gift store, and just some neat stuff to see and do. We did get our pictures taken old west style, the whole family as a group and then just the children. They are now hanging on our living room wall along with a WANTED poster with our name on it and our alias, The Tumble Weed Gang.
That's Dear Man and I at Boot Hill Cemetary, as the sign so plainly says.
Eyebright got some good shots of the shoot out at High Noon but this was my favorite.
That is the Sheriff of Dodge and he was about to take on two unruly cattle drivers who wound up robbing the bank.
While we were checking things out, we met a neat little man named Charlie Meade. He gave us his business card and if we mail it to him he will send us a package of materials about the history of Dodge. Charlie is a Special Deputy US Marshal. Be sure to ask for him if you are ever in Dodge and get his card!
It was time to get out of Dodge and move on to Kansas destination number two, Independence. Yes, that's Independence Kansas, not Missouri. The home, or near home, of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
That's Dear Man standing in the doorway. As you can see it was not a very tall house. It was small inside, of course, and I even checked to see if the bedstead had rope run across the frame, just like in the book. It did. There was even a China Shepherdess on the fireplace mantle.
At this site there is a school and a post office, brought from other places and to just give you an idea of what those would have looked like from that time period, or so. The gift shop was pretty nice as well, and we bought the Little House on the Prairie audio CDs to listen to in the car.
The town of Independence was NEAT! We liked it very much and it has a great city park with a small zoo, water park, tennis courts where people actually play at 8:00 at night.
While in Kansas we did two other things. Took a picture of our dear Mouse the Motorhome Cat. She traveled very well and we were pleased with the arrangements we had made for her commode. I'll show pictures of that another time, for the traveling curious.
The other thing we did was get those car window paint markers and put this on the back of the motorhome.
In case you can't read it, it says, Kentucky or Bust. On the car side windows we put, Look out Kentucky, here we come! Eyebright didn't get a picture of that evidently.
Don't ask me why, but I liked Kansas. I wouldn't want to live in Dodge, but I could easily live in Independence. We were anxious to get on with the trip though, and running out of money, we had only one more state to get through before Kentucky and we couldn't wait!
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Cheryl Allin
www.homeschoolblogger.com/cherylallin/
Edited by cherylallin on Oct. 9, 2009 at 9:12 PM