Day 3: Dust In The Wind

Despite get­ting to bed at 2AM in my lux­u­ri­ous room at America’s Best Value Inn in Independence, Kansas, I awoke around 8AM on Day 3 in a fog. As I’m barely func­tional until I get a cup of cof­fee and since the hotel’s idea of cof­fee is a push-button con­trap­tion in the lobby that’s basi­cally pow­der and hot water, I decided to test my portable cof­fee setup.

Before I left St. Louis, I vis­ited REI and bought an MSR Pocket Rocket single-burner isobutane/propane-powered camp stove and an ultra-light anodized alu­minum teaket­tle. Having never used a mixed-fuel camp stove, I’m impressed with this lit­tle gad­get. It sounds like a jet engine and boils water in just a cou­ple of min­utes. The Pocket Rocket, cou­pled with an AeroPress Coffee and Espresso Maker, is The Business, as far as I’m concerned.

Caffeinated and awake, I sought out two places in Kansas City sug­gested by Roadfood.com: YJ’s Snack Bar and Mama’s 39th Street Diner. As it was a Saturday morn­ing when I arrived, both places were packed, and since I had some seri­ous ground to cover, I skipped break­fast and headed to the Johnson County Museum Of History in Shawnee, Kansas. There were no tours of the 1950’s All-Electric House for some rea­son, so I wan­dered through the exhibits for a few min­utes, and came across this cream sep­a­ra­tor, which I thought was cool.

Cream sep­a­ra­tor from the 1800s

The next stop on my itin­er­ary was the Alma Creamery in Alma, Kansas. From their website:

The Alma Creamery, the home of the famous Alma Cheese, is located in the beau­ti­ful Flint Hills of Kansas. Alma Creamery is ded­i­cated to build­ing upon a local tra­di­tion that started more than 59 years ago. That tra­di­tion con­sists of cre­at­ing our tra­di­tional, high qual­ity, all nat­ural, hand­made cheeses.

I picked up small blocks of pep­per jack, extra-sharp ched­dar, and my favorite of the bunch, a hickory-smoked Monterey jack that was firm yet creamy, and one of the best cheeses I’ve ever had.

Alma Creamery truck

I headed back toward I-70 en route to the Garden Of Eden in Lucas, a haven for folk and out­sider art. Unfortunately, my late start on the day had me miss the clos­ing of the facil­ity by 15 min­utes, so I shot these from the street:

Sculpture at the Garden of Eden

Sculpture at the Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden

So instead of get­ting the scoop on this weird lit­tle place that’s rel­a­tively in the mid­dle of nowhere, I set­tled for a photo of the World’s Largest Travel Plate:

World’s Largest Travel Plate

Driving on I-70 through Kansas is fairly mind-numbing, so I was more shocked than I nor­mally would be when I came over the crest of a hill and saw these giant wind­mills loom­ing. These pho­tos don’t con­vey how mas­sive and alien they looked when I first saw them.

Windmills in Kansas

Windmills in Kansas

I was start­ing to get hun­gry, so I plot­ted my route to Hays, where I’d find Al’s Chickenette, a joint rec­om­mended by Roadfood.com, where the spe­cialty is (obvi­ously) fried chicken. I sat at the counter—I love a restau­rant with a counter—and ordered the two-piece chicken din­ner (white meat) with mashed pota­toes and cream gravy. The chicken was pip­ing hot and moist inside and had a crispy, crunchy exte­rior, but it was almost devoid of fla­vor. At least it filled the hol­low spot in my belly.

Al’s Chickenette in Hays

About three hours later, I found myself in the Mountain time zone and my stop­ping point for the day, Burlington, Colorado, but not before I snapped this photo as the sun set. I love the vis­i­ble streaks of sun­light pok­ing holes in the clouds, spray­ing in every direction.

The sun sets over Kansas

Sunday’s itin­er­ary includes Pike’s Peak, and I’m going to try to find Owl Farm, Hunter Thompson’s house in Woody Creek, to see if the 150-foot mon­u­ment that was erected and out­fit­ted with a can­non to fire his ashes into the sky after his death still exists. Then I’ll decide whether to stick around Denver and see what hap­pens at the Democratic National Convention, or con­tinue far­ther west.