I woke up feeling almost sweaty from the couped up van, but it had been worth not getting bitten. For the first time in months, I did my usual morning routine of washing my face and making cereal for breakfast, all the while looking out at my surroundings. The sunrise was shining pretty rays through the distant clouds on the horizon.
I was on the road fairly early, seeing an unwelcome snake cross the road on my way out. Once I hit the highway, the driving continued to be straight and flat, it was entertaining! I called my estranged mate Alex who’d stopped talking to me over six months ago for seemingly no reason. He’d gotten back in touch and I finally called him to see what was up. It was good to reconnect with him and we talked for a good hour.
Between camp and my first stop at the world’s biggest hand-dug well, I saw plenty of things to peak my interest in the drive across Kansas. The first was a bunch of wind turbine blades laid out on the ground in a grid. It took me a while to figure out what they were. Initially I thought they were aircraft fuselages or something because of their size but they were the blades of the huge wind turbines you see in windy spots everywhere. They looked impressive in their size sitting on the ground. Next, there was a guy in a fluoro yellow shirt walking along the highway pushing a pram that was labelled “Walk Across America”. He was heading west so I suppose that means he was pretty much halfway? I hope he had a good audiobook to listen to. My greatest surprise on the drive was seeing a peacock on the side of the highway. I don’t remember seeing peacocks since my family’s days camping at Midge Point when they were absolutely everywhere. His feathers weren’t spread out, but he impressed me nonetheless.
Right, the Big Well! This was something I’d spotted on my Atlas as a point of interest and I assumed it would be a “walk up and look into it” type thing, but it’s actually a small museum. Not really keen about the likelihood of paying a fee, I went in anyway. The young girl at the desk gave me the speel and I was interested enough to pay the $6 ticket. I was willing to pay that much just to have a break from the driving. Inside the small museum I learnt about the well and why it was dug in Greensburg. Per usual, it was thanks to a couple of enterprising young men who wanted to bring people to the town and did so by offering free water supplied by the well that reached down to an underground aquifer.
It was an impressively big hole, measuring one hundred-something feet deep and at least ten meters in diameter. For its time (early 1900s) it was an engineering feat.
Also part of the museum was the story of the 2007 tornado which tore through Greensburg destroying no less than 95% of the town. Looking at the path of the tornado on a map, it was almost comical how the twister of destruction had managed to land in the small town when there was nothing but fields surrounding it. More than half the population abandoned the town to relocate elsewhere since they had no home and no belongings. It only took a few minutes for everything to be raised to the ground. An interesting and sad story to read about.
Thoroughly happy with my big well experience, after dropping a few pennies down the well for luck, I went on my way. I continued driving east across Kansas and didn’t really find much of interest to distract me from the driving so I listened to a bunch of podcasts and my Theodore Roosevelt book. A couple of hours later, I was in Hutchinson at the Cosmosphere. This was famed to be the museum with the best display of the space race and so, in honour of Jon’s birthday, I was keen to check it out.
I made myself a sandwich when I got there and ate it in the shade of the entrance to the building before going in. If anything, this museum was going to serve as a reprieve from the humid heat in the car. It didn’t help that my passenger side window had finally given it away, making alarming gear-slipping noises whenever I tried to operate it. Oh the joys of motoring, I’m quite happy to have a problem like this instead of one that involves a fuel pump!
The Cosmosphere was beautifully airconditioned so that I felt relief walking through the doors. At the ticket desk, I found that my timing was perfect. Approaching 3pm, I would have enough time to see all the movie screenings and check out the museum before closing time at 7pm. There were displays outside of the downstairs museum that I perused between the shows I attended.
The first show was in Dr. Goddard’s lab and was a live display put on by a very enthusiastic young man who I’m guessing is aspiring to be an entertainer. He had all the kids in the room giggling with glee as he lit cottonballs on fire, built rockets and set them off. There were plenty of loud bangs and screams, it was a brilliant display of science, enough to get any kid to want to go home and blow stuff up. On the way out, I thanked him for the show that he’d done so well.
I perused the outside exhibits a while before my next show called “Blackholes”, a movie shown in a dome theatre and narrated by Liam Neeson. It was composed of plenty of computer graphics mostly made to show of the technology of the dome screen I think, but it was cool enough. Afterwards, the same performed from Dr. Goddard’s Lab projected an image of the night sky onto the dome and pointed out some of the constellations we can see every night.
After the show, I went straight to the simulator, a ride which was included in my ticket and was happy to find no one in line. I’d have time to jump on it then get back for my next show. It was utterly pathetic, but the aim was to put you in the pilot’s seat of a Blue Angel’s plane flying in all sorts of formations over famous American landmarks. After the launch simulator of the Kennedy Space Centre, this was childsplay.
Back to the theatre for my last show, “Think Big”. This film was targeted at younger people, showing how engineering skills are used the shape the world. I felt pretty special being probably the only engineer in the room watching it. While watching, I paid attention searching for a possible stroke of inspiration that might lead me to my next career move. I definitely got some ideas from it but I wouldn’t say I had a eureka moment.
Finally with all the shows over, I could explore the museum. By this time, the refreshing feeling from the airconditioning had worn off and I was cold so I folded my arms as I entered the museum. The displays moved chronologically through the history of rocketry, starting with the military need to destroy people. I hadn’t heard this side of the story before, but I learnt some devastating facts about how Hitler brought the first rockets to light, killing thousands of people in the process of their manufacture. Some of the official notes written by Nazis were disgusting, they made orders stipulating that no matter the loss of life or well being of workers, the rockets must be built. Probably the most hard hitting fact was that 10,000 people, all prisoners of war, lost their lives because of the torturous conditions they were kept under while building the rockets. Less than half that number were actually killed by the rockets.
I learnt next that these exact rockets lead to the start of the cold war when Americans seized the rockets and scientists from the manufacturing facility, therefore getting the lion’s share of the intellectual information when by an agreement that stood between the Americans and the Soviets, it belonged to the Russians. This is what kicked off the ever-competitive nature between the two countries in their race into space.
The rest of the exhibits told me of events already known to me, but it was interesting to read about them from a different perspective. The museum definitely had a lot of rare artefacts and writings from history that I hadn’t seen before. With the cold getting to me and knowing that camp was a couple hour drive away, I hurried through the last few exhibits and made for the exit. I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of heat coming back into my body but didn’t really need the swelter of the heat in the car.
Hutchinson didn’t offer any free camps and I didn’t feel like a Walmart stay over so I elected to have a late night and drive another two hours to another Wildlife Refuge Park. There was definitely nothing to entertain on this road but the skies lit up for me. I watched as the sun lit up whispy clouds before turning the horizon a dramatic pink and blue. With the days being so long, it was a drawn out sunset that lasted all the way until I found my camp.
After a few miles driving on a loose gravel road, I found the lake and almost no one around it. There were plenty of sites to choose from and I settled for one on the west side where I could see the lake. Starving hungry, I heated up some leftovers and watched some TV in my outdoor chair with the laptop perched on the picnic table. I had gathered some firewood thinking I’d keep the bugs away with a fire but there was no need so I didn’t bother. The only bugs keeping me company were fire flies, flashing bright green against the black sky.
After one episode of TV and some dessert of yoghurt and trail mix, I was dog tired so climbed into the van and fell asleep almost instantly despite the humid heat.