Day 5 - Goodland, Kansas

Well it was quite the day today. First we got another thunderstorm, well mostly a lightning storm early in the morning and luckily by the time we got up it had all stopped. We were on the road by 8h38 am, very wet. As we were heading for Kansas City, Ross was driving and luckily so as the rain started as well. Early morning traffic, some construction, but all went well and no major delays. Interestingly one-third of Kansas City is in Missouri and the other two thirds in Kansas. Drove by this humungous stadium, quite impressive. We could see the city skyline on the horizon to our left. It rained and rained on.

As we left the city limit, we got into farmland. We have noticed on our trip so far that there is a lot of road construction everywhere. It certainly must help jobwise. I noticed looking at the map of the USA that we seem to be smack in the middle of it all. Kinda neat.

9h55, it has stopped raining. Great! Drove thru Topeka, which we believe is the capital of Kansas. Saw these grain elevators on the right which stretched on and on. Never seen so many at one time before. Rain again at 10h24. Drove by Rossville. Muffin break.

Driving thru treeless rolling road bordered by blackened fields. Ross believes they must have had brush fires this spring. It is quite extensive as we drive on.

Skies are getting brighter. Yea!! 10.7 degrees. Teasing weather as Ross called it. Orange brush fields now to the right. I took over the driving for a little while. Drove in to Abilene, home of Dwight Eisenhower. Met up with a very nice lady at the Tourist Info and were offered coffee and cookies. We had lunch then drove over to see where President Eisenhower had lived as a young boy. He had 3 brothers. How amazing that someone born in such an unpretentious place would become a General as well as the President of the United States. It was neat to come off the highway and find such a town with a lot of history. Wild Bill Hickock also was a lawmaker here.

1h22 pm back on the road. SUNSHINE!!! And then we had this yellow crop duster plane come sweeping by and I got a good photo of him, lucky me. Just a minute or two later, on our left was a large herd of buffaloes grazing. Ahead, a farm of wind turbines (Ross counted 22). Later on we saw many many more. Temperature is now up to 20.7 degrees, great.

Now I'm driving and Ross saw far away this with two tall towers which turned out to be the Cathedral of the Plains. We can't wait to Google it.

Just pass the city of Colby, much to our surprise, we see snow on the side of the road. We check the elevation .. 3250 feet .. and again more snow. Took a photo. It was explained to us when we finally checked in at our campsite that one week ago they had a two-day snow blizzard with winds of up to 50 miles an hour and roads were closed. Wow, we are glad we missed it....

There are mobile irrigation sprinklers all over the fields as we drive on, one was actually in operation. Everything seems very dry here. We finally arrive at destination to find out that we had gained one more hour ... that's OK. We had been on the road for 9 hours but what a day!

We went into Goodland so we could see for ourselves the famous 32 foot high replica of Vincent Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers (actually painted by a Canadian artist) which sits on an 80 foot easel. Seems like sunflowers are the State flowers of Kansas.

Well that's all for today.....