In the spirit of: “We just want to get to the Dakotas and do things there”, we had another driving day of about 600 miles. We drove the second half of Kansas and all of Nebraska…. and it is amazingly boring. Endless field, all beige, white and an occasional black cow, this all covered under an endless sky with low grey clouds, but at least it was not raining today. Dry but cold, temperature when we arrived at the hotel was 27F / -3C.
Finding things to do in either state to make them count was also hard. The one thing in Nebraska was closed by the time we got there. We always did count a picnic or a restaurant towards “been there”. So we were going to eat in Nebraska… if not for Covid-19 rules it would have happened. We ended up with Mc Donald’s, and due to the low temperature ate it inside the car instead of as a picnic. STIL COUNTS, if not for that at least for the endless, boring drive.
However we had made 3 more stops in Kansas this morning, starting with the early morning in Newton.
Blue Sky sculpture.
This outstanding blue sculpture works very we together with the sky, who dressed in blue for the occasion. The always changing and moving sky represents our memories from the past and the hopes for tomorrow. We enjoyed this photo-op to start the day off.
World’s Largest Ball of Twin
When Frank Stoeber, in 1953, started rolling 2 pieces of sisal twine together, he thought (somehow) let me keep adding some more every day and set a world record.
Currently the circumference is 43 feet, and visitors are encouraged to add there own twine, as long as it is sisal twine. (It will be removed otherwise, we assume by the “guardian of the sisal twine”)
Karlien and I were both surprised there was no twine shop or twine truck across the street where you could buy your little piece of fame and become a world record holder for a while. So if anyone is looking to start a business, get with the town counsel of Cawker City, KS. You can stay at their very own “Ball of Twine Inn” while you set up shop.
Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States
Okay, so the title really gives it away, it is the middle of the country (well the 48 contiguous states). The one thing it doesn’t include is that during winter and windy conditions, the temperature drops. It drops low, real low, to freezing and below and you really should dress better then we did. But real tourist don’t give up for a bit of frost bite and we took the pictures, we took in the view and returned over the backroads. It was there we saw the real start attraction, the bystanders.
We were looked at, stared at, as if we came from another planet. The crowd of cows that gathered and stood there looked as if they had never seen a human before. We now know it was a little foreshadow of the fact we would be driving through endless fields for the rest of the day,… TILL THE COWS COME HOME.
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