Days 4-5: Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana

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Day 4 (Thursday, April 9) saw us finally leave Colorado, get through Kansas, and arrive in Kansas City, Missouri late in the evening. On Day 5, we did even better, passing through Missouri (including Jefferson City and the outskirts of St Louis) and Illinois before finally stopping in Seymour, Indiana. These were two good days of driving, but because our schedules are a little messed up--we're still on Pacific time)--we ended up doing a lot of driving at night. Which means, of course, no photography and little sightseeing.

Leaving La Junta
Day 4 started with an unexpected turn of events. We went to breakfast at the Copper Kitchen Cafe in La Junta (as seen on Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt), and then returned to the Hampton Inn to check out. While I was doing so at the front counter, a man asked me if I was Zahid. Surprised, I copped to that, and he introduced himself as Ron Davis, the Director of Economic Development for La Junta. Apparently, being good at his job, he has a Google Alert set to notify him of any mention of La Junta online. Our last blog post triggered that alert, and he actually came to our hotel to find us (the Honda Civic with the UC Davis license plate frame gave us away). I was impressed with his detective work, and we struck up a conversation.

Ron is trying to reinstitute the Highway 50 Coalition, a defunct organization of cities along US-50. He was interested in knowing more about our trip, and gave me some information about other travelers. (Such as Tom Brokaw, who is doing a piece on the effects of the economy on middle America, and is using US-50 as his route.) Ron also offered help in several ways ("if you have any trouble on the road, give me a call--I know people all up and down highway 50!") and told us that he's subscribed to this blog.

It just goes to reinforce what you all already knew--no matter who your target audience is, you should expect that anything you post will be viewed by a larger audience.

Ron might be glad to hear that La Junta did turn out to be the friendliest town on our trip so far. Three different people (besides him) struck up conversations with us about our trip and wished us well. It was a nice environment. And, by the way, the Hampton Inn was very nice--probably because it's brand spanking new.

Granada Relocation Camp
Day 4 also took us to the Granada Relocation Camp (also known as Amache), one of the many internment camps to which people of Japanese descent were "relocated" after FDR's infamous executive order. The camp is pretty spare right now--it just has some posted signs, a brief history, a National Historic Landmark plaque, and foundations for some of the buildings. But it's still a pretty touching location. I liked that they didn't try to whitewash the story of the camp to give it a Hollywood ending--the information there included the ugly reactions of the locals to having the internees there. But there were also some fair-minded people defending the camp's residents, and there was information about them as well.

We Got Weather
We had been pretty lucky weather-wise through the first three-and-a-half days of our trip, but it started raining on us somewhere in Kansas and really started coming down toward the end of the day. At times, particularly when we were behind trucks or passing them, it was almost impossible to see, thanks to the rain. The clouds did make for some beautiful landscapes, and we tried to do justice to them in some of the photos below. On Day 5, the precipitation lightened considerably but it was still overcast and occasionally rainy.

A Word about Food
That whole thing about eating healthily is out the window. So are the bans on fast food and chains. Enough said about that; we'll try to get back on track tomorrow.

Our friend Kevin commented on our last post with a link to a map of restaurants Guy Fieri has visited on his show. While we haven't had an opportunity to visit any of those places so far, there are several in Baltimore, New Jersey, and New York, and we may try to hit some of those on our trip. Thanks for the map!

A Word about Personal Style
Yes, I got my hair cut. I really like the super-short look--in fact, in the five days since I got it buzzed, I already think it's grown too long. I'm sure you're all fascinated by this topic, so stay tuned--maybe I'll start a whole separate blog about my hair. But probably not.

A Word about the Maps
It finally occurred to me that the maps don't quite work the way I'd intended. We wanted the map with the Day 1 post to show our progress through day 1, and the map posted on Day 3 to show our progress through Day 3. But since we're embedding the map via a link, the map we posted on Day 1 now has all the pushpins on it from the whole trip--not just the ones from that day. We'll probably leave it like this for now, but if any of you map-savvy folks out there (you know who you are!) has an idea about how we can do this better, please let us know!

Day 4 Photos
Welcome to Kansas

Big flag

Monuments in Lamar, CO

Granada (Amache) Relocation Camp

Dodge City

Fields of gold

Day 5 Photos
Leaving Kansas. This photo raises the question: what state are you in when you've left Kansas but are not yet in Missouri?

We saw tons of churches today. Also tons of Walmarts, but we refused to photograph them

Quoth Sandy, "Now that would be my kind of town!" This was one of many fireworks ads we saw in Missouri

Love the brick silo

Whimsy on a water tower

Apparently, Missouri is closer to home than we'd expected

We also saw lots of beautiful and well-kept farmhouses in this part of the country

Missouri statehouse

I believe this is the first ad-on-a-barn we've seen

In places, the road is cut out of this rock. It makes for a lovely effect among the rolling fields

I don't know what kind of tree this is, but it's all over Missouri. It really stands out among the greenery.

We're finally in the land of frozen custard. So much for eating healthily. The custard wasn't that great, either ... guess we'll just have to try again in the next town :)

Salem, Illinois is one of the many towns we've passed through where US-50 is also known as Main St.