Day 3 Wrap

ST. LOUIS, Missouri – Two and a half hours of sleep at Josh’s brought my two day total to 3.5. At 5:15 AM, I was back behind the wheel. First stop, well, coffee of course, but then after speeding across the state of Missouri, we stopped in Independence to visit the home of our nation’s 33^rd President Harry Truman. I had hoped to visit his grave site as well, which is in the courtyard of the Truman Presidential Library, but as we exited our car, we were promptly and curtly informed by the man (uniformed security) that the Library did not open for another two hours and we could not see the grave. After drive-by’s of Kauffman (KC Royals) and Arrowhead (KC Chiefs) Stadiums, we crossed the border into Kansas. We did not know it at the time, but from that moment and for the next twelve hours, Patrick and I found ourselves existing in a circle that Dante hadn’t even considered. Record heat was scorching the Midwest and we were bearing the brunt of it in Patrick’s Suzuki Grand Vitara. The air conditioning was overburdened by the triple digit temps that persisted the entire day. Kansas had much to offer though. In Topeka I checked off state capitol #47, and we also stopped at the former Monroe Elementary School, which closed in 1975, but is now a museum and serves as the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. In Abilene, we visited the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library, Ike’s boyhood home, and his grave site – all at 104 degree. With our fill of history, it was time to climb – well time to boulder actually. Kansas doesn’t exactly have many climbing options so bouldering was really our only choice. Twenty minutes north of I-70, just outside the town on Minneapolis, in the heart of Kansas wheat fields is a unique collection of massive spheroid concretions. It is named, quite appropriately, Rock City.

Still well over 100 degrees, we paid the $3 fee at the gift shop and donned our climbing shoes. For the next half hour or so we both entertained and challenged ourselves on whatever problems we could find, all the while hoping that the rubber wouldn’t completely melt off the soles of our climbing shoes. With time running short, and still many miles to go, we abandoned our bid to summit Mt. Sunflower, the Kansas highpoint on its extreme western border. Instead, we played on the Colorado welcome sign and briefly contemplated religious salvation upon our deliverance from that tenth circle known as Kansas. At 10:45 PM, after 17.5 hours on the road and 1000 miles on the odometer, we arrived in Longmont and our friend Liz welcomed us in to her home.