We ended up spending the night in Overland Park, Kansas, thus entering the fifth state on this trip. We did not expect a whole lot of exciting things to entertain us during this day, but we did observe some fun and interesting things about life in Kansas, on the surface, anyway.
I suppose everyone knows at least one thing about Kansas: there are tornados that whisk you up to the Land of Oz... No such luck today; rather, an uneventful drive with the thought ringing through my mind, "What are we doing here?" Besides, I forgot to bring my red slippers... I may never get home this way.
So, this is what we saw during the drive towards more interesting things, in Dodge City. Corn. Corn, corn and corn, to begin with. Never-ending fields of corn.
The cottonwood tree is the state tree of Kansas. This member of the poplar family grows to huge size and is found along the river and creek bottomland. In those areas, the trees often grown in groves and clumps. The individual trees that are found by the roadside or farm land are often stately trees that are very old. Cottonwood trees were brought west by settlers and flourish here. (I was fascinated by all the dead cottonwood trees along the roads...)
Oil in Kansas was first struck by William M. Mills on November 28, 1892.
Named Norman No. 1 in honor of the blacksmith whose land Mills was working, the well initially produced twelve barrels of oil a day. It was the first oil well west of the Mississippi River to produce a commercial quantity of oil. By 1904, Kansas was producing four million barrels of crude oil per year and, in 1925, ranked fifth among the states in oil production.
Norman No. 1 was abandoned in 1919 and remained overgrown along the banks of the Verdigris River until 1961 when a replica of the original derrick was erected on the old well site as a memorial. Today Norman No. 1 is a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A museum has been built in a city park surrounding the site--a fitting recognition of Norman No. 1's importance as one of the most significant oil discoveries in U. S. and Kansas history.
Other regularly occurring "landmarks" were the multiple windmills, from the small farm irrigation-moving windmills to the giant new-fangled windmills that hover on the ground like some sort of mammoth insects ready to sting us.
There were scores of windmill blades resting on the ground by the road and we were thus able to witness how extremely large they are; the largest can be nearly 300f long.
Silos everywhere of all descriptions! This one looked like a skinny tower until we drove past it.
All roads (and railroads) lead to a silo ... or MacDonald's ...
This old silo is here only because I liked the photo (by Kathy Yates).
Another photo that is not mine is this one of cows keeping their milk cold... We did see a similar sight, but photo here is by Judy Graff. (No, I don't know these "guest photographers.")
WELCOME TO DODGE CITY, KANSAS!
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