Yes! I saw the most SPECTACULAR sunset I’ve ever seen while driving through the Flint Hills in Kansas. I’ve seen hundreds of great sunrises and sunsets all over the country. I’ve seen thousands more pictures of great sunrises and sunsets all over the world (I’m a sunrise/sunset junkie). None of them even came close to this one. I-35 at this point was a parking lot, because just about everybody pulled over and stopped, got out of their cars, sat on their hoods or trunks, or stood and stared until the colors faded and it got too dark to see. I didn’t see anybody taking pictures, and I didn’t have a camera either. It wouldn’t have been the same, anyway. If I could describe it in a way that would do it justice, I would, but I can’t, so I won’t. It was one of those you-really-had-to-be-there moments in time.
I was born and raised in the fairly pretty and sometimes hilly northeast Kansas (Leavenworth/Lansing) area but I don’t miss it at all. Lots of bad things happened to me in Kansas, so while I have a knee-jerk native’s reaction to defend it in threads like this, I really have little love for the state. I wouldn’t want to go back and live there unless I had no choice whatsoever (and even then, I’d live in Kansas City, Missouri). I love Chicago too much to leave anyway. It feels safer to me too, strange to say.
The Flint Hills are hauntingly beautiful though. Lawrence is cool too.
No, it’s about 120 feet from the Base Camp (3920 feet) to the summit (4039 feet). I love the named “features” that these clowns added to the map! The “Leigh-Mallory Coulloir,” indeed!
Well, let’s see. It’s been right nigh long about 25-30 years since I’ve been there, but I seem to recall a rickety wooden spiral staircase that was used to get to the bottom. And once there, about the only thing to do was to, of course, look up! I also seem to recall some sort of shop where you can buy postcards and souvenirs, but like I said it’s been so long that the memories are kinda fuzzy.
I have lived in Michigan for the last 23 years, but in some ways I still think of Kansas as “home”. I hope to be able to live there again some day (maybe in retirement?).
I have a map of Kansas, and I have noticed that it is the only state where you can make an alphabet of town names that start with every letter, on account there is a town called Xenia for the awkward X part.
But there is also a Xenia in Illinois, so you might be able to do it with that too.
Other than this, I know absolutely nothing about Kansas, other than the fact that Kansas City is actually in Missouri, which is odd.
(lets not mention the fact that I spent most of my childhood wondering why no one mentioned the state arkansas and what this mysterious place ‘arkensaw’ was )
After about 37 hours of driving westbound through Kansas, we pretended the clouds on the horizon were the snow caps of the Rockies. The mind does strange things in Kansas…
It certainly is. My mother grew up there, and we used to go out there for Christmas every year when I was growing up. My uncle still runs a pawnshop there.
I remember that it could be (and usually was) bitterly cold at Christmas, and it was hot as blazes the few times I was out there in the summer. I’m sure it’s a nice place to live if you’re into that, but I’d just as soon give it a pass.
I’m surprised no one else has corrected this, but…
Kansas City is on the Kansas/Missouri border. It’s basically one city with the Missouri River flowing through it, but since the river is the state line, there are technically two adjacent cities, both called Kansas City: one in Missouri and one in Kansas.
So Kansas City is in Kansas. The other (much larger) Kansas City is in Missouri.
My mother grew up in Kansas, all us kids grew up in Georgia. One year, we all headed out to Kansas for a family reunion. Mom warned us kids - “It’s awfully flat out there!” Yeah, right mom. So we get there, and there is nothing but horizon as far as the eye can see. What do you call reverse claustrophobia? It was like that. I felt so…exposed. A couple of years later, the Kansas relatives came to Georgia. Their remark? :My God, I didn’t realize you lived in the mountains!
It’s not basically one city - they have completely different governments, laws, taxes, and cultures. They do border each other across the river, but they still have a very different character.
People also forget about North Kansas City, which borders KCMO, and is a separate entity:
“here is neither north nor south nor east nor west, here is nowhere at all.”
I think that’s from the wizard of oz, or maybe just from a book called “was” by Geoffrey something -good book, about how a farm girl from kansas named dorothy gale might really have had it.
Anyway, I live in KC, and that’s exactly how I’ve felt about it since I moved here 3 years ago.
)