The Wheat State

Eureka to Pittsburg

The last time we were in Eureka (Nevada), I mentioned that there were 14 Eurekas in the United States.  I can now truthfully say that I’ve been in 21.4% of the US Eurekas (the third Eureka I’ve been to is in CA).  

In Eureka, we camped out in a public park in the middle of town.  Part of the public park includes a pool, and showers.  The best part?  It’s free!  Since it was near 100 degrees (with 100% humidity...yay?), I swam/floated/sat in the pool for quite awhile.  

Fun fact: Kansas is the wheat state because historically, it has produced the most wheat out of any state in the US.  In 2007, however, it produced the second most wheat, behind North Dakota.  In 2008 it regained its crown as America’s top wheat producer, but continues to produce less wheat than it has in the past.  According to Kansas Wheat, farmers have shifted one million acres of wheat over to corn and soybeans, simply because those crops are more profitable.

And the excess corn has begun to take over—It’s in everything, from cheese to chips to cereals to your gas tank.  In Kansas, it’s everywhere, as well as in everything.  A chapter of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma is aptly titled “King Corn.”  In middle America, corn really is king.  Maybe even dictator.  Totalitarian perhaps.  Welllll not quite, but almost.

Truth

After my float in the pool, I took a walk downtown.  Out of the 30 or so storefronts, there were only two stores open at 7 PM: a bar, and a cell phone store.  The rest of them either closed at 2 PM, or had long gone out of business.  It was eerie how empty it was.  We’re definitely not in California anymore.

Downtown Eureka

Further evidence of our rural location were several drawings in one of the storefront’s window’s.  It looked like there had been some sort of farm safety drawing contest among the county’s children, and the best ones were on display.  I got a kick reading some of them: “Don’t play with livestock,” “Be safe...not unsafe,” and “Never play in grain bins” were my favorites.  When I was little, my safety instructions included “stop, look, and listen” for crossing the street, but I didn’t grow up in a hazardous farm setting.

Nor did I grow up with fireflies.  Sitting outside next to our tent that night, as dusk set in, fireflies began to appear.  They looked like little shooting stars, flying across the lawn, bright spots in an otherwise rather bleak day. 

Burning Brush

Hutchinson to Eureka

Dave waiting for the train to pass  

On the way from Hutchinson to Eureka, we stopped in Hesston, which was quite metropolitan compared to the rural towns we’ve passed through in Kansas thus far.  At City Hall, I spoke with John Carter on the county’s waste management practices.  They have a voluntary recycling collection service, as well as mandatory solid waste collection.  For yard waste, they have a burn site located a bit outside of town where residents can bring their tree branches and grass clippings.  The ash from the burned brush gets taken to the landfill.  So does food waste.

Hutchinson

Whenever we have a rest day we wish we could just stay there.  Hutchinson, Kansas was no exception.  We couch surfed again, this time with a recently married couple, Sam and Cheri.  Perhaps the most surprising part of the stay was that I ate something I hadn’t eaten since November, 2002: a hamburger.  I’d say that freshman year of highschool was when I started developing an interest in the problems of industrialized foods when I saw a public television special on cow feedlots and slaughterhouses.  Already having been bombarded with information on the unhealthiness of burgers, learning about feedlots and the associated atmospheric and watershed pollution (not to mention e. coli) caused me to give up burgers as a new years resolution.  Eventually, veggie burgers became my barbequed food of choice, and for seven years I never considered eating a ground beef burger (Fast Food Nation could have also contributed to this).

However, on Sunday night, I ate a real ground beef hamburger.  Why, you might ask?  I’d like to say it was because of my dedication to food waste minimization, but they did also smell incredible.  And, according to Cheri, the beef was “farm fresh” and safe enough to eat raw.  So, there in Hutchinson, Kansas, I broke my seven year resolution.  And it was worth every bite.

Yesterday we went to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum and learned all about the history of space travel.  It had a lot of really cool items on display, including World War II V-1 and V-2 rockets, a piece of moon rock, and space suits that have actually been in space.

Sam & Cheri's house

Looking east toward Cheri's parents' house—the lawn on the left is where we played croquet. Cornfields on the right.

A little perspective—their house is in the middle of this google map satellite image.

Sam and Cheri cooked us dinner again last night.  We polished off all of the sandwiches they prepared, of course, but not the seeds or rinds of the cantaloupe.  Those, Cheri put in a tree outside for birds and squirrels to eat  Not quite compost, but better than sending them to the landfill.  After dinner, we went over to Cheri’s parents’ house next door for some croquet and conversation.  By the end of the evening, it felt like we were old friends.  Whoever invented couch surfing is a genius; our two night stay in Hutchinson exposed me to so much more of Kansas than I ever expected to see.  I now have such a different impression of the state, an impression that most cross-country drivers never get to experience.  Small town America and Kansas isn’t boring if you’re in good company. 

Red

Larned to Hutchinson

Today was the first time I was laughed at.  As I was leaving Larned this morning, I asked about whether or not the city had a recycling or composting program.  The woman looked at me like I was some sort of alien.  “No, no we don’t,” she chuckled and looked at the girl on her left.  “We’re not very green here, now are we Leslie?”  

The opposite of green is red.

I was going to continue questioning her, but I felt like her response spoke clearly.

EDIT:

Plus, she was misinformed.    

I continued to do some searching, and contacted Joan at City Hall by phone the next day.  Larned does in fact have a recycling center.  It’s open Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, as well as Saturday mornings; however, residents have the option of bringing their recyclables to the collection bins at any time.  They recycle cardboard, newspaper, glass, plastic, tin, and aluminum.

Larned also provides residents with yard clipping collection services.  They collect tree branches the third Thursday of every month, as long as they are less than four feet long and in a bundle.  The branches are taken to the transfer station for the Pawnee County landfill, and then taken to a burn pit.  Larned residents can also obtain a grass collection bin from City Hall, and the waste management program picks up the grass clippings once a week.  The landfill composts them!

Kansas isn’t quite as red as I thought it was! 

People Live in Kansas?

Scott City to Larned

Yes, but not very many people.  And it’s unclear as to whether people live in Rush Center or not, since the only open establishment was a liquor store.  Even the gas station was closed.  

So, after biking for 12 hours, Dave got to bike an additional 30 miles to Larned, Kansas, so that we could sleep in a hotel tonight.  I miss civilization.

Kansas Plains

Eads to Scott City

New State: Kansas!

Since Austin’s recovery time depends on his wounds staying clean and free of infection, his mom has been generous enough to get us hotels for last night and tonight.  When Austin spoke with her on the phone before we arrived in Eads, she told him to apologize to me about last night’s hotel.  When we got there I understood what she meant: the was a hole in the wall, the rusty bathtub didn’t drain, the parking lot hadn’t been paved since the 70’s, and Dave stumbled upon several cockroaches in the bathroom in the middle of the night.  All of us, however, were unfazed.  As long as we’re not sleeping on dirt I’m completely satisfied.  This summer is about being away from the comforts of home, so showering in a tub that doesn’t drain (right after Dave’s post 115 mile bike ride) is completely okay with me.

This morning, I chatted with a few people in Eads.  It turns out that they do have a recycling program, but the residents are required to take their recyclables to the collection bins in town.  There’s no compost program, and the people at K & M Ranch House Restaurant don’t compost either—they toss their food scraps.  In the garbage.

Entering the Central Time Zone...AKA time traveling

On the way to Scott City, we passed through Leoti, the county seat of Wichita County.  The county is known for its outmigration status, high infant mortality rate, and lack of educated residents (28.3% of the area population has less than a high school education), according to this website.

Downtown Leoti

As part of Wichita County's community development plans, they have recently implemented a recycling program, where county residents drop off their recyclables at a collection center in Leoti.  Additionally, they built a wind farm in 2008, called the Central Plains Wind Farm, which harnesses one of Kansas’s most well-known natural resources to generate power.  I’ve never really thought of Kansas as a leader in the environmental movement, but it has a high ratio of renewable energy per customer. 

There are a lot of cows and feedlots in Kansas, so that’s what we had for dinner in Scott City: Kansas City strip steaks.

Prisoners Recycle, Too

Pueblo to Eads

Fun fact: Fremont County, the county to the immediate west of Pueblo, is known as “the prison capitol of the west.”  It has twelve state prisons and four federal prisons, including an Administrative Maximum Penitentiary, or “super max” security prison.  The “super max” is home to several terrorists including shoe bomber Richard Reid, Ramzi Yousef (1993 WTC bombing), and Zacarias Moussaoui (9/11 co-conspirator).  While it seems odd that Pueblo should house so many convicts, it is actually beneficial to the county’s economy—and environment.  It turns out that the lower security prisoners, who are set to be released soon, are an essential part to the county’s recycling program.  The prisoners provide labor to the county, and pick up recyclables as part of the Upper Arkansas Recycling program.

Pueblo County also recycles, but pick up services are not available to the actual city of Pueblo, only to West Pueblo.  There are drop off locations within the city, however, where residents can recycle glass, newspapers, and cans.  

We discussed this with Jack and Donna, the couple that we stayed with last night.  The woman that Dave contacted on couchsurfing.org couldn’t host us, but recommended we contact Jack, her former biology professor (at CSU Pueblo).  Since their children moved out of the house (almost 30 years ago), they’ve loved hosting exchange students.  We, of course, loved being hosted as well.  Jack took us out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night, and this morning, Donna made us omelettes.  Good food, beds that don’t deflate, generous people, and showers.  We didn’t want to leave, but we had to continue on to Eads today.

Outside Jack and Donna's house in West Pueblo

Flat and rural indeed

Once we left Pueblo, it felt like we were already in Kansas.  It’s flat, rural, and agricultural.  AKA boring.  And, unfortunately for Dave, the winds are also blowing from east to west, hitting him with an unfortunate headwind.  I rode with him for 30 miles today, since Austin’s off the bike; but two flat tires, flesh-eating flies, the wind, and the heat made today quite difficult.  And we’re not even in Kansas yet.