We checked out a little nightlife in Wichita at a karaoke bar called The Stop. It wasn’t very full but everyone was super friendly – and not in a creepy way. We shot pool with some locals and the bartender gave us a long list of things to visit. Beers were cheap. Signs around the bar with awesome and instructive. On the way out of town we did stop by the Keeper of the Plains, a 44-foot tall steel sculpture standing at the point where the Big and Little Arkansas rivers join together in downtown Wichita. It was created by Native American artist Blackbear Bosin. It is striking.
We got to recreate a few moments from the lives of the Dalton Gang, gangsters from the 1890s at the Dalton Gang Hideout in Meade, KS. They robbed banks and trains. Their sister lived in Meade. The presumption is that they hid out there, in a tunnel under the house. We didn’t hold anyone up but we did get to trek through the house, the tunnel and the outbuildings. Also there were a lot of artifacts – mostly notably the albino raccoon, aka star of my future nightmares. (Absolutely worth the $5 cover charge.)
Our scheduled stop was in Liberal KS, home of Dorothy Gale’s house from The Wizard of Oz! There are some cut-outs of the expected characters and the house does look a lot like Dorothy’s. Apparently someone just got the idea that Liberal should become the official home to Dorothy. Someone knew of a house that looked like the one from the movie; so they moved it to town and worked to make it look even more like it. Ironically, the tornado siren started blaring just as we hit town. I thought our timing might be creepy but spot on. Turns out, they were just testing. To be fair, we now know that tornados can run forever in Kansas because there is nothing to stop them!
After driving about a billion hours through Kansas, we filly blew through Oklahoma and Texas and into New Mexico!
10 Questions About... 