Kansas and Oklahoma

 After our visit with Calvin, we headed south to Kansas, the first new state I visited on the trip. You know all the roadside attractions that people talk about or you think up when you picture a long road trip across the USA, for instance, the World's Largest Ball of Twine? Well, Kansas actually has the World's Largest Ball of Twine, or one of them, and we just had to visit.

This one was started by Frank Stoeber in Cawker City, Kansas as a challenge to an already existing huge ball of twine up in Minnesota. Started in 1953, by 2006, it's size exceeded the one in Minnesota.

 

Kansas has a ton of hidden gems, and lots of interesting abandoned buildings along the empty back highways. We stopped in Nicodemus, Kansas. It is a National Park Service Historic Site and had some pretty cool old buildings. It is being preserved by the NPS because it is the only remaining town in the west that was settled by African Americans after the Civil War. The picture above is of a schoolhouse in Nicodemus, it was closed in the late 50's.

Natural beauty isn't exactly the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Kansas, but Monument Rocks is a beautiful and very unique place to this part of the country. Just south of Oakley, it has recently switched owners and is privately owned, but there are no facilites or information in the area. Just a 7 mile dirt road through corn fields leading to this awesome place.

As we strolled into Greensburg, the town looked really strange and alot different than any we had seen in Kansas. Every single building, house or structure in the town was completely new. We had seen seen alot of oil wells and pipelines on the way in, I figured it had been a boom town that had been recently built. Anyways, the real reason we were here was to see the World's Largest Hand Dug Well! As we pulled up, this building was brand new as well, and looked way too nice to be holding something billed as the world's largest anything. Right when when pulled up we noticed it closed at 6, it was 6:01, Rachel decided to ask the lady closing the place down if we would peek inside real quick. Surprisingly, she said yes. This was even more surprising after we realized the admission was $8, and we didn't have to pay it. For only spending 1 full day in Kansas, we had so many interactions with the friendliest people! I love it there. She also informed us that the reason all the buildings in the town were new was because of the tornado in 2007, an EF-5, the largest ever to hit. The well itself was scary deep, 109 down, there was a stairwell you could take almost to the bottom of it.

Oklahoma.......ugh. My friend Tre is from Oklahoma and said to us once he heard this is where we were headed, "don't you know it is a desolate, barren wasteland? Don't go there". He wasn't too far off. Since I try to follow the motto, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all", I'll just post a couple pictures and be done with it. The pictures below are all from the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.