Blacktop Dreams
You've
probably heard the taunt:
When I drive through Kansas,
I always do it at night.
Why, asks Rex Buchanan, co-author
of Roadside Kansas, when you can span those 400-plus miles on
Highway 160? The associate director of the Kansas Geological Survey
swears by the road.
It runs from Pittsburg to Johnson
City. In the east, it goes near the zinc-and-lead mining towns of southeast
Kansas (like Galena) and Big Brutus (a 16-story-tall, 11-million-pound
electric coal shovel retired in 1974).
"I've always been a fan of really
big things," Buchanan says.
Farther west along 160, you
see sandy Chautauqua Hills country and Flint Hills.
"And I think Elgin, down on the
Oklahoma border, is one of the most interesting little towns in the
state," he says.
It's an isolated almost-ghost
town, he says, that used to sport a sign on its outskirts that read,
"Elgin -- A Town Too Tough to Die."
Farther west, past Medicine Lodge,
come the Red Hills: "I like the reds of the siltstones, sandstones and
shale out there, especially at sunset or after a dusting of snow."
The eatery at Sun City -- Buster's,
featuring cold beer and chili -- comes recommended. So, too, would the
Sitka Social Club, were it still around. Sitka, just north of the Oklahoma
border, was a place where trucks had to weigh on their way into or out
of Kansas.
"I thought it was the best restaurant
in the state until it closed a few years ago because of an unfortunate
divorce."
He ponders a moment.
"Why can't we all get along,
if only for the sake of the eaters?"
At last you reach High Plains.
At Johnson City, you're just a bit north of another favorite spot: the
Cimarron National Grasslands.
There, Buchanan says, you'll
find wagon ruts from the Santa Fe trail, roadrunners, kangaroo rats,
porcupines, mule deer, cholla cactus and other stuff that's unusual
for Kansas.
If you can't make it across Kansas
on 160, don't worry.
"Of all the highways we covered
in Roadside Kansas, I like this road the most," Buchanan says.
"But I'm not sure it's my favorite drive in the state."
More on that, if Buchanan consents, later.
