Corn corn corn corn. I knew the long haul across Kansas would be a challenge. So I started the morning off by being the first one to charge into the over-advertised Meramec Caverns. Truly, they are extensive, and I admit I’ve never seen such an impressive array of different formations. Sometimes the trivia of their use was interesting (Jesse James Hideout story, the Art Linkletter Honeymoon Cave Prank) and at others somewhat embarrassing (Tom Sawyer movie final scene, Lassie sat on this rock). We rushed past the real formations so quickly, the guide turning on and off light switches, that we really never had a chance to enjoy the cave itself. It’s too bad, because if you can battle past the parking lot zip line, the trampoline, fudge factory, gift shop (with all imported items), and cave Jacuzzi (only one of those doesn’t really exist there), the caverns themselves are worth it.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/080313_1800_AmericanRoa2.jpg?w=1080&ssl=1\")
And then? Corn\u00a0corn corn corn. Hours of grain and train, houses dilapidated and struggling. This place is hard on people\u2014there are many elderly, and none of them age well. Their houses, crippled or abandoned, have worn themselves away, surrounded by the rusting yard junk of generations. In Colorado, I found much the same, but the yard became scrub and dirt.<\/p>\n
I stopped at the Tall Grass Prairie Preservation program, but it was closed. I walked the trails anyway, one of the only places where the pulverizing plowblades of the early 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century never reached. The Dust Bowl (a history I just listened to in The Worst Hard Time) destroyed a 2000-year-old ecosystem which we will never see again, but this small hillock had a sample. I spent the night on a small lake shore where the plains winds brought with them a nighttime thunderstorm. Packed the tent in Corn corn corn corn. Diner with old people, Polaroid photographs fading against the wall, and grease melted into the woodwork. The grain train blows past three times in 30 minutes. Rust. Another pickup truck with an American flag propped up in the bed. (What is it\u00a0raised in defense against?) A gas station rack labeled “Hostess” sits empty.<\/p>\n So it does not surprise me that here lies the Capote-obsession, the Cutter Massacre historied, Holcomb, KS. My last stop in Kansas was the creepiest: Main Street was a wide and dusty emptiness of the sides of buildings and broken homes. No one moved on the street my entire ride through town and back; every house seemed to lie darkly. Surely it was my imagination? I left quickly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Corn corn corn corn. I knew the long haul across Kansas would be a challenge. So I started the morning off by being the first one to charge into the over-advertised Meramec Caverns. Truly, they are extensive, and I admit I’ve never seen such an impressive array of different formations. Sometimes the trivia of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,304],"tags":[588,590,587,591,585,586,584,589],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chizblog","category-travel","tag-capote","tag-cutter","tag-dodge","tag-holcomb","tag-kansas","tag-meramac","tag-missouri","tag-prairie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/080313_1800_AmericanRoa1.jpg?fit=352%2C231&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1742,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/american-road-trip-1-south-dakota-to-iowa\/","url_meta":{"origin":1709,"position":0},"title":"American Road Trip 1: South Dakota to Iowa","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2009 Aug 6","format":false,"excerpt":"Day Fourteen: The Badlands to the Middle of Nowhere [Obviously, finding an internet location today was difficult, so I am behind in uploading my updates!] The storm over South Dakota's badlands was serious enough for a few to lose their tents. Mine held and I slept soundly! My early morning\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/080609_0251_AmericanRoa5.jpg?fit=485%2C313&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":823,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/year-of-the-potato-for-corn-eaters\/","url_meta":{"origin":1709,"position":1},"title":"Year of the Potato \u2013 For Corn Eaters","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2008 May 5","format":false,"excerpt":"I just found out today\u2014please don\u2019t ask me how\u2014that 2008 is the International Year of the Potato.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s IYP, for those of you who are on the inside track. Who knew such amazing facts as 1\/3 of all the world\u2019s potatoes are grown in China and India, that Dan Quayle still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/maxresdefault.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":791,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/the-main-ingredient\/","url_meta":{"origin":1709,"position":2},"title":"The Main Ingredient","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2011 Jan 21","format":false,"excerpt":"I watched the couple in Kroger last week as they moved down one of the over-processed center aisles. \"Look!' exclaimed the woman all too loudly as she picked up the bright yellow box of Kroger's Frosted Fudge Toaster Treats. \"These look good!\" She dutifully glanced over the nutrition label and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/013011_0446_TheMainIngr2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":829,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/velvet-memories\/","url_meta":{"origin":1709,"position":3},"title":"Velvet Memories","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2009 Mar 29","format":false,"excerpt":"Fresh. Pure. Delicious. Made fresh daily in Detroit. Most of us don't think of the late 1960s as the Golden Age of the peanut butter sandwich. I do. It was a time when my grandmother would make sandwiches with Smucker's jelly and Velvet Peanut Butter. I don't know how many\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/033009_0344_VelvetMemor1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1657,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/oak-leaves\/","url_meta":{"origin":1709,"position":4},"title":"Oak Leaves","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2008 Oct 5","format":false,"excerpt":"In ancient Greek legend, the cave-dwelling Cumaean Sibyl, a famous prophetess, wrote the future on a series of oak leaves.\u00a0However, every time supplicants came to ask of their fortunes, they would open the door to the cave and the West Wind would blow in, scattering the leaves.\u00a0\u00a0Thus was the future\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/08\/cumean8.jpg?fit=427%2C301&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1721,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/kathmandu\/","url_meta":{"origin":1709,"position":5},"title":"Kathmandu","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2009 Jun 17","format":false,"excerpt":"Kathmandu is sari\u2019ed women riding side-saddle on Yamasaki motorcycles as they pass by Magar girls in low-hipped jeans. It is a young police officer cornered roughly and shoved against a bus panel as he tries to issue a traffic ticket. A Rahani-era roundabout imitates Piccadilly Circus but has a crumbling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/08\/nepal-bricks.jpeg?fit=448%2C326&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/080313_1800_AmericanRoa3.jpg?w=1080&ssl=1\")
the rain.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/080313_1800_AmericanRoa4.jpg?resize=299%2C199&ssl=1\")
Is it any wonder that places like Dodge City have all but forgotten what they are about? The pathetic Boot Hill Museum has all of the right ingredients and none of the talent or interest in even shilling tourists for an image of the Old West which never existed.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/080313_1800_AmericanRoa5.jpg?w=1080&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n