Well we did not put on too many miles today for a few reasons. First we are pretty beat. Second we had this sweet hotel last night which was hard to leave. Third the CowTown museum does not open until 10:00, Forth, we spent all morning at the museum and did not get out of there until around 1pm. And last, it was really hot (95), muggier than we are used to, and the wind blew like stink from the south which pushed us all over the road. So we took a lot of stops.
But the museum was great and Wichita is actually a really nice city. Cessna/Beechcraft have their headquarters here and the make over half of all business jets in Wichita. It really shows in the nice parks, museums and general health of the town. Bike paths along the Ar-Kansas (That's how they pronounce the river name and Arkansas is how they pronounce the state), art museums, and this CowTown museum we visited this morning. Once again, I am a couple weeks short of the senior discount, but we were surprised at the quality of this place.
They have paid folks working in the leather shop, the blacksmith shop, saloon, railroad station, and they each were excited to answer any and all questions. So between yesterday and today I feel I have a real sense of the history of the plains. Wichita had a few folks starting in 1869 and the railroad came in 1872. That caused a lot of things to happen. Cows could be bought cheap down south and if you drove them to the rail head in Wichita, you could make good money selling them. They got shipped to the eastern cities for good money. Hordes of people came by train to Wichita in the first few years (and beyond), to get the free land. The town exploded.
What is different about their history as apposed to back east, is they got started 100 years later. So a lot of technology existed (farm implements, printing presses, medicine, woodworking tools, musical instruments, books, steel (high carbon), etc. So all of this stuff had to get shipped here with people to use it and sell it. So Wichita, and probably most towns out west grew really really fast.
We even got to see a gunfight, which was kind of cute, and the folks that work there get killed or kill someone two times a day.
Dave says, and it is true, that these little local museums are the best because the folks working in them love to talk about the history. And the other great thing is that most of the ones had ancestors that moved here way back when so they have roots here. We are indeed a land of immigrants.
So back out in the heat and we set our sites on the Missouri border and the temperature was already up there (for a couple Vermont boys). Once out of the city of Wichita, it was a straight shot to Missouri on Rt 400. It was medium busy as it is a good road, but there are not many big towns in this corner of Kansas. The wind immediately started kicking our butts, blowing us side to side. We shut off the radios because all we could hear was static from the wind.
We stopped a few times to re-hydrate and rest in any air-conditioned places we could find (most places), met a couple from Tennessee that were riding their Triumph Tiger triples to Colorado and they looked hot in their full protective suits. We stopped in Augusta KS to visit the vintage motorcycle museum I found last summer, but they were closed today (grrr..). So we finally gave up on seeing Missouri and landed instead in Parsons KS, which is actually another town, too small for big box chains, but big enough to have a couple of every kind of store required. We had dinner in town at the local place and somehow got our beers for free (Dave said he gave the waitress the Miller twinkle..). We tipped accordingly and back to the motel to do laundry and take a swim. We slept like rocks last night and as soon as the dryer is done with our laundry, we are going to collapse. Weather looks good the next couple days so Missouri tomorrow for sure!
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