Quincy, Illinois to Salina, Kansas

The biblical sky

There are two or three illustrated bibles for every person in Kansas, and the folks out here seem to think it's important to convince everybody else that they've got a direct line to the Almighty which might explain all the crosses and lawn signs and church marquees. With morning skies like these you can almost understand their anticipation for a Second Coming:

Charlton Heston had to be around here somewhere.

In the prairies the third dimension is up

To an easterner, you can feel a certain impatience for miles and miles of little more than miles and miles, and a flatness that makes you long for a third dimension in the landscape. Yet there is something alluring about the wide horizon, and some of our most enjoyable drives have been across the prairies. You can see perhaps why so many people of wider vision grew up in the plains; today alone we drove by the birthplaces or childhood homes of Dwight Eisenhower, J. C. Penney, and Blackjack Pershing.

Miles and miles and not much else across the top of Missouri.

The fourth dimension is history

It's a travel day, not a tour day. But traveling itself can be as much of an enjoyment as arriving at your destination. For part of the route we took across northern Kansas, we followed the historic trail of the Pony Express during its mere eighteen months of operation out of St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1860-61 before the telegraph lines reached California. In Kansas, we drove through both the Kickapoo and Potawatomie tribal grounds, before turning south to the capital, Topeka. From there, the remaining two hundred miles pretty much looked like this all the way:

Route 70 in Kansas. We're kind of surprised that Dorothy wanted to come back.

Driving across the country is like living through history, forward, with the eras defined by the county names: Adams, Monroe, Franklin, Jackson, Taylor As you proceed westward the names become more recent: Lincoln, Hayes, Harrison. And the towns reflect the nostalgia of the settlers for the towns they left behind: New Salem, Illinois; Troy, Missouri; Manhattan, Kansas.

Tomorrow is election day. All we can say is exercise the most important right you have, and go vote. Try to use some intelligence in making your decisions.

Tomorrow: Colorado!