Jack Kerouac said that Des Moines, Iowa, had the most beautiful women in the country. Bill Bryson grew up here and became very cynical about Americans (and people in general). I took the interstate highway around it.
As it winds its way around Des Moines, I-80 is joined briefly by I-35. To the north I-35 splits, I-35E passing through St. Paul, I-35W through Minneapolis. To the south, it splits again, I-35E passing through Dallas, I-35W through Fort Worth. I-35 runs from Lake Superior at Duluth to Mexico at Laredo.
This is just something I thought about as I rounded the corner and headed toward Nebraska.
The landscape in western Iowa is only slightly different from that of Illinois. It's all farm land, but it isn't quite as flat. The small rolling hills force the farmers to plow in curves rather than straight lines, which probably cuts down on yield but does a great deal for the aesthetics.
I passed signs advertising the Strategic Air Command Museum and the Danish Immigrants Museum and Windmill. Some day I should stop.
I hit Omaha around 9:00, which wouldn't have been so bad had not highway construction forced stop and go traffic for several miles. When I finally got to the actual construction, I stopped briefly (not by choice) next to the man holding the "SLOW" sign. I said, "do I have a choice?" He just laughed and showed the sign to the car behind me.
At Grand Island I headed south on US 281. For the first time this trip I was on new ground. I cross the Platte River (very small at this point) and headed due south into Kansas.
A mile north and west of Lebanon I visited the Geographic Center of the Contiguous U.S. It may seem like a cheat not to include Alaska and Hawaii, but this cairn was planted in 1940, so I think they can be excused.
The Center looked a bit run down. There may have been a flag atop it at one time, but now all that remainED was a stub of a pole.
I
parked behind an RV (the only other vehicle in sight) and pulled my camera
and tripod out of my trunk. As I was setting up my shot, an old woman popped
out of the camper and asked me what state I was from. She was intrigued by
my cardinal license plates. She guessed Kentucky but was wrong.
We spoke briefly about travel. She and her husband (presumably hiding in the RV) were returning home to Minnesota after a visit to the southwest themselves.
She watched me take the first of my timed self portraits, then disappeared without a word back into the camper. Maybe she thought my running back and forth was a bit too strange for her.
A sign next to the Center said that souvenirs were available in Lebanon. I stopped for gas in town ( $1.19 full service!) and asked the owner/attendant about postcards. He said that he thought that the grocery store in town had some.
In the past, he said, the Geographic Center was a big tourist draw. Now, however, very few people make the trip. We spoke a few more minutes philosophically about the demise of roadside tourism before he took my money and I drove into town.
I didn't find the grocery store. Of the twenty or so storefronts in the "business district" of Lebanon, perhaps four looked as if they had housed a business in recent years, and only the gun shop was actually open. I just drove on.
Just south of Lebanon, as I left US 281 for Kansas 181, I hit more road construction. The woman holding the stop sign told me that I'd just missed the escort truck and that it would be another twelve or so minutes before she returned to take me through.
She said she had considered waving me through so I could catch up, but it was too late now. She thought I might have been an old person. Old people often don't understand the directions or are too timid to drive fast to catch up. She said that by the time she realized I was a young, handsome man it was too late.
I wondered how someone with such poor eyesight got a job standing in traffic.
She asked if I was there for graduation (I think every high school in the state is holding graduation ceremonies tonight). I told her that I was heading to Cawker City to see the Ball of Twine. She said that it was very nice and that Ishould take lots of pictures.
I don't know how the conversation took off the way it did, but, before the escort truck returned, I had learned about her husband (also in road construction for the same company), their hunting activities, their son, his college education, his friends, his car, his girlfriend, her financial status, and her miscarriage seven years ago.
No other car had come during the wait, so the truck escorted me alone through the three miles of construction. I only had to drive on the grass once.
Cawker City looked a little bigger and slightly more alive than Lebanon, but not much. Some of the storefronts had already been through "downtown revitalization" and were now closed antique stores instead of closed barber shops and hardware stores.
Cawker City is home of the World's Largest Ball of Twine. What's this, you say? You thought Darwin, Minnesota, had the World's Largest Twine Ball. Here's the story:
When the man who made the Darwin twine ball died, construction stopped. It was given to the town, who encased it in Plexiglas and preserved it for the ages.
They claim, to have any validity, a ball must be made by the efforts of only one man. How hard is it for a group to make one?
The man who made the Cawker City ball donated it to the city, then died a few years later. It was not bigger than the Darwin ball when he died.
Now every year the residents of Cawker City have a festival, at which they add to the twine ball. It is now larger than the Darwin ball, and it is still growing.
So which is the largest? I don't think it matters. That these two twine balls exist is enough for me.
While the Darwin ball is enclosed and out of reach, the living, growing Cawker City ball is out in the open (well, under a roof). A sign warns against climbing on the ball, but the townsfolk apparently have no objection to touching.
I bought some postcards and a Mountain Dew at the gas station/grocery store next door. The girl behind the counter was a bit taken aback when I picked up twenty cards, and she had to go for the calculator to figure out 20 x $.25.
Click here for a map to the twine ball in Cawker City, Kansas.
After Cawker
City I headed southwest, south, and east again to Lucas, home of the
Garden
of Eden. The tour ($4+tax) guide said that the house and grounds were
an example of what is called "Visionary Art". I call it "Crazy Old People
Art." The definition is the same:
Started late in life
No plans, just an idea and an overpowering urge
Annoyed neighbors
Concrete
OK, the last was my contribution, not hers, but it fits.
This is a wacky place full of bizarre sculpture that defies description. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. Maybe when I get some of my pictures scanned and uploaded it will make more sense. The statues are biblical and political and whimsical.
Oh, and the tour includes a peek at his corpse in a cement coffin (no photos allowed, alas). The guide assured us he was in much better shape until about eight years ago, when the coffin got an air leak and all that mold got in.
From Lucas I dropped down to I-70 and started west again, with speed. My car was very dead-bug-encrusted until I hit a thunderstorm around Russell (hometown of presidential hopeless Bob Dole).
I saw bright sun and white puffy clouds, dark stormy clouds and heavy rains throughout my infinitely long drive across Kansas, all at the same time. At any given time, while I sweltered under the sun in 90+F heat, I could see one or two or three heavy rain storms off in the distance.
The rain washed the bugs off my windshield, but they came back.
I passed two (and stopped at one) Stuckey's in western Kansas. I will save the Pecan Log Roll for later.
About ten miles before I hit the Colorado state line I was watching the sun get lower in the sky in front of me when my car was again cleaned off by heavy rains. As the rain moved behind me, my photo op alarm went off, and I started watching the dark skies in my rear view mirror. Finally I looked back over my right shoulder and saw what I had been looking for: a big big rainbow.
Unfortunately for me, I had loaded the camera with ISO 100 film at the Garden of Eden, and I didn't feel I had time to get out the tripod, so I shot a dozen or so handheld shots with fairly low shutter speeds. We'll see how they turn out.
After what seemed like a month long drive across Kansas,I was in Colorado, the fourth state of the day and the first new one in almost nine months (state count is at 40 now). I had intended to drive on to Limon, but I'd been driving for about fourteen hours, so I decided to stop here in Burlington.
Tomorrow I will drive to Pike's Peak, then wander around, spending the night in Denver (I've already made reservations). I'm tired of driving now (671 miles today, 955 since I left home last night) and look forward to only covering about 250 or so tomorrow.