Day 28 - 275 Miles

Destination: Just get the hell out of Dodge

It's laundry day in Dodge City, KS. I've always considered a laundromat to be the great equalizer. Everybody's got dirty shorts or something. From haughty ladies washing the big comforters that won't fit in the machine at home to migrant agricultural workers. I get to talking to a trucker doing laundry there about my adventures so far. Somehow the biggest ball of twine, which happens to be in Kansas comes up. I've already decided it's way far north and not really on my way to anywhere, but another local suggests I seek out the biggest ball of barbed wire. Apparently some tornado came through and rolled up about 200 miles of barbed wire. The local guy tells me it's only 30 miles up the road and surely the locals up there can tell me where it is.

First though I was encouraged to see the Boot Hill Museum and Cemetery. It's an eclectic little museum. Sort of a cross between a natural science and history museum, with live re-enactments. I think I've discovered my next Christmas gift project: wreathes made from my own hair. I can't imagine the time and patience that took for some frontier woman to make a wreath from human hair. A talking animatronic longhorn tells some story that I was just too amused at to grasp the point. They did have some cool paraphernalia from Gunsmoke. When I was a kid, I got on the set of Gunsmoke and met Sheriff Matt Dillon, got his autograph. What a great TV show.

My search for the biggest ball of something was unfruitful, but I did get a lot of funny looks from the several people I asked. I gave up and continued east on even a smaller road. Kansas is still flat, but at least there's some things to look at along the roads. I now have logged more than 7000 miles on this trip alone.

If not for the barbed wire folly, I would not have driven past the sign for the Kansas Motorcycle Museum in Marquette, KS.

Stan Engdahl was a racer and collector, and owned a motorcycle shop there. When he retired, he and his wife, LaVona gave the building to the town if they would help develop it as a museum. One wall is covered with over 600 trophies Stan alone won in his racing career spanning the 1940's to 1990's. He recently passed and his wife continues to run the museum. It really has some fascinating motorcycles from the past, but the scooter collection in the back were the most interesting to me.

I decided to stop in Emporia, KS for the night. The S&S diner was my dinner destination. Full of locals, that always look me over when I come in all dressed like the Michelin Man, but seen to get a kick out of my cross country adventures.

Todays pix:





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