Kansas City

Before we arrived in this large but sparse city, we spent the night in one of its many southern out of town suburbs. As a consequence, and partly due to a deeply unpleasant meal in Applebees (not vege friendly at all), my already low expectation of the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers managed to plummet to rock bottom. Honestly, at this point, after the rural endlesslessness through which we had passed to get here, I would have been happy if this city offered anything at all.

The next morning we set off through the first rainfall that we had confronted for 2 months. This trip immediately passed us through some of the most confusing and illogical elevated freeway systems ever constructed. Not for the first time on this trip, we were scared and bemused by a traffic system seemingly conceived after a long hallucinogenic drug binge. It was frightening. Lanes would suddenly split in two directions and present any inattentive driver with a concrete divider and a quickly issued ticket to oblivion. This was not good.

As the downtown area and the state of Missouri slowly emerged through the spray of a torrential downpour, our expectations were immediately surpassed. A sprinkle of intricately decorated gothic skyscrapers and large industrial brick structures poked through a haze created by the rain. This was by far the most interesting architecture that we had seen since leaving San Francisco, so armed only with a small umbrella we parked, and set out to explored the various central districts that define this city.

Kansas City is by far the most pleasant surprise that we have discovered so far this trip. Between an eerily quiet downtown area and a cosmopolitan 'Plaza' district sits a low lying (former)industrial sprawl that reminded both of us of Brooklyn. Here, countless bars and galleries and empty studio spaces are sitting, just waiting for the right kind of creative investment. I'm not sure what it was about this place, but it certainly felt like a place oozing with potential. I liked it a lot.

Downtown

The Missouri River

Local Fashion

The Local Brewes

Street Art

© All Images By Paul

East Kansas

Back in the first half of the 19th century, when California was a part of Mexico and Texas was a republic, the Santa Fe Trail was the main route into the unorganised territories beyond the ever moving western frontier. Before the creation of the railroads, this important wagon carved highway was primarily used for trade and the facilitation of the 'Manifest Destiny'; the belief that the immigrant communities who settled the north eastern colonies were destined to expand and settle the whole of this sparsely populated continent.

Now, for the remainder of our time in the state of Kansas the path of this trail would loosely determine our route north east toward Kansas City and Missouri. So, with Kinsley and the half way point across America now firmly planted in our rear view mirror, we headed towards the nearest town of Greensburg. My first impression of this town was that it seemed like it was brand new. All around us, widely separated partially constructed buildings exposed their innards to the dry local air. All of this provided a surreal spectacle that could only be explained after I did a little research...

It appears that late on May 4th 2007, Greensburg was hit by a devastating 205 mph tornado that destroyed 95 percent of the city and killed eleven people. It was declared an official disaster area by President Bush shortly after, and has been rebuilding itself as a new town and model of green living ever since.

After refueling the Beast we continued our passage via the back roads that meander north east through this flat state. We had been eager to avoid the Interstate where possible, and we were being rewarded with small town after small town, each different, and each forgotten by the bland and generic developments that have clung to the few major motor arteries that we had previously been forced to utilise.

This passage more then consumed the remainder of the day as we continued our journey up through Mennonite country, and onward towards a beautiful fading sunset that hovered over Marion Lake and our last night outside of Kansas City.

Small Blue House


Tank and Play Park


One Nation Under God

Forgotten Church

A Kansas Sunset

The next morning we headed to Hutchinson. I was a little giddy given the possibility of confronting a childhood obsession, but I composed myself as we entered the towns Cosmosphere and Space Centre. There was a suppressed 8 year old version of myself that was a little excited about what lay ahead in the foyer of that clinical concrete building and he wasn’t about to be disappointed...

... as we entered through an unassuming glass doorway, its presence was immediate and impressive; the curved contours of a complete SR-71A Blackbird, the US spy-plane that, in model form had hung from my bedroom ceiling as a child. It is still hard for me to get my head round the fact that such an incredibly beautiful machine could be such an intimidating agent of war and destruction.

Beyond the space centre, Hutchinson is actually quite an interesting place. Apart from the seemingly random existence of this space centre and its twee little planetarium, it sits above a vast salt mine, over 600 feet beneath the surface, which is now used to for the safe keeping of the negatives of some of the earliest and most important works of American cinema.

© All Images By Paul

West Kansas

As we continued east through Colorado, still on Old Highway 50, the landscape quickly blunted. The peaks and forests of the west had now been replaced by a wide and flat expanse of rurality. Farms increasingly dominated every perspective and numerous concrete granaries stood, like huge cathedrals that dominated the land. Looking out at endless fields in every direction, the common description that this area is the Breadbasket of America seemed appropriate. It felt like we had arrived in another country, so different was the landscape from what we had seen up until now.

Kansas State Border

After we crossed the Kansas state border we crossed another timezone and headed to Holcomb, the setting of a tragedy that went on to inspire Truman Capote to combine journalism and literature in 1966, the year that he published the first 'non-fiction novel'. 'In Cold Blood' (the book that he wrote) is a favourite of mine. It was the product of over 6 years of intense local research and it captured (to my eyes at least) the impact of the murders that took place in this small town, with both sympathy and poetry. It's legacy with regard to literature is obvious. By contrast, its legacy with regard to this small town is definitely more muted. Holcomb now seems like a sombre place that is imprisoned by its past. It appears concious not to cash in on the memory of the victims of that terrible crime (the Clutter family) and it does this with a dignity that I know would not be reflected had this event occurred elsewhere.

A Huge Granary and Holcomb (setting of 'In Cold Blood')

After a quick picnic in Holcomb, we jumped back in the Beast and continued east toward Dodge City, a former frontier town immortalised in countless wild-west stories. This town used to mark the boundary between the lawlessness of an untamed west and the more established settlements of the east. It prospered up until the late 1800's when Kansas officials decided to curb the activities of the countless saloon's and brothels that existed within its boundaries. Thankfully, or not, depending on your perspective, nothing of this wild history remains today. The town is aware of its past and has various references to its former glory emblazoned on bill boards, contrived historical recreations and on street signs; but the truth is that modern day Dodge is not the place that it should be given its history. How very disappointing.

So out of boredom rather due to some argument picked with a filthy gunman in a whisky swilling saloon, we got the hell out of Dodge. We were approaching the halfway point of our journey across to the Atlantic and so wanted to mark this achievement by visiting one of the handful of places that claims to be at the centre of middle America. We chose Kinsley, a town which has unofficially renamed itself 'Midway' to do this. It sits at the exact midpoint between New York and San Francisco, and offered little apart from a sleepy Main Street and some fantastically rustic wooden homes that clung to small dirt roads.

I have to admit that I liked this place because it represented something truly and authentically American. It was a remote functioning town, geographically separated by a large distance from everything other then wide sun baked fields. For a man from the comparatively small and congested island of Britain, it felt like another planet.

Kinsley Sign

© All Images By Paul