Ch. 3 - Where Superman Grew Up

You know what? Kansas wasn't so bad. Sure, it was long... no single state should be that long, really. But after driving through it for a couple hours I actually started to find the landscape quite interesting and the drive went pretty quickly. Maybe it was just my frame of mind that lent the land its epic quality, but I was surely taken with it. I kept thinking about how vast and open the land still was out there, and how many Manhattans could physically fit into just one of the enormous fields I was passing right off of I-70. This is where Superman was raised.. where Dorothy and her little dog lived.. where only about 150 years ago cowboys were crossing these great plains, over 600 miles from Kansas City to Denver, on freakin' horses! Horses! It is hard for me to even imagine how much their asses hurt. This is the stuff of American legend, this is God's Country!

Now, I'm not saying I would want to stop and live there, it is the dead center middle of nowhere after all. And I think too many people who live there now take God's Country way too literally, if you know what I mean, but it sure was nice to drive through it at 85 mph. The following pictures are excerpted from my "Behind A Sonic Burger in Russell, KS" series. See what I mean.. mythic. Even Foxy the car thought so.

I arrived in Lafayette, CO just before 6pm.. I had made it to Mountain time and the third stop on my trip. I was almost immediately farted on and tackled by my Cousin Becky's two sons, age 7 and 4. More on them soon, but for now this chapter ends with an advanced literary technique they once learned me in school: Foreshadowing. Since this post is about Kansas, I thought it appropriate to show you my latest souvenir now: