Doesn’t the featured picture on the top make you hungry for Hidden Valley Ranch Salad Dressing?

We were dreading the drive across Kansas, I’m not going to lie.

We had heard about how boring it was.

But that wasn’t our experience.  Maybe it’s because we drove across Kansas driving east, so that the wide & rolling green landscape welcomed our eyes which had become accustomed to views of the high desert and rugged, snow-capped peaks.

 

This was a taste of home.

 

 

But it also possessed geological reminders of places we have been in the past 6 weeks.

 

It was kind of like Wyoming, with green grass  and trees on top.

 

The scenery even looked playful to me the way that it rolled and then flattened, rocks peeking out from underneath the grasses.  Call me crazy, but I really enjoyed the drive across Kansas.

 

We were chomping at the bit to get to our next destination, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum in his hometown of Abilene.

 

Both his boyhood home and his final resting place are here.

 

The museum was excellent, top-notch.  It was as much a WWII museum as a DDE museum.  Lots of exhibits, memorabilia, and his own personal items.  There’s even an entire room devoted to Mamie.  If you ever find yourself driving across Kansas, it is worth it to make a stop.  It’s right off the interstate.  Appropriately, Eishenhower had the first interstate in America open here first.  Some other facts I learned from the kids:  he was the first president to appear on color TV and the first to be president over all 50 states.

 

It was refreshing to read some of his quotes and watch some clips of his speeches because it seemed that he wanted to do right by God and our citizens in his leadership of our nation.  I’m not trying to say he was perfect.  I’m just saying that when a president has this as his aim, it’s a really good starting point.

 

This quote hit me:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

 

After playing a little football and eating lunch, we jumped on I-70 again.

 

This conversation actually took place…

“Honey, isn’t Topeka a humble-looking city?”

“Huh?  I didn’t even notice.”

 

Anyway, we drove across Missouri and Illinois without stopping (except to sleep once).  Not even in Saint Louis!  (Although we made sure to take a picture of the Arch and the new bridge.)

 

We also did one of our famous “accidentally drive through the heart of the city” moves like in Bend, OR and Denver, CO.  It wasn’t so bad this time, though, because it was the weekend.

 

We wanted to get home so bad!

But we did have one more destination before we were officially “home.”  And I’ll tell you about that one next time!