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Kansas is not a terrible state...it is not an ugly state at least....it just takes over half-a-day to cross on I-70. There is the Brookefield Hotel, which has great fried chicken and ice cream for desert. Kansas is not that bad...I wouldn't want to live there, but it certainly beats Arkansas and Oklahoma. Eastern Kansas is much hillier than Western Kansas.
I was talking about areas west of Salina. After you travel west of Salina you enter the High Plains region. This is where most of the problems with water supply depletion are starting to become evident. The main cities in the High Plains region of Kansas are Dodge City, Garden City, Liberal, Hays, and Goodland.
I have driven across Nebraska about 1,000,000 times in the past 30 yrs. It is definitely less populated than the more eastern midwestern states, but it does not have the rural poverty that Plains10 speaks of in Kansas. Mostly you see well-tended farms/ranches and little towns. I have stopped in a few. Kearney and Ogallala (sp?) are tourist traps, and have been since the Oregon trail days. It's a shame about Kansas, that's for sure.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 09-09-2007 at 05:21 PM..
Reason: typo
I have driven across Nebraska about 1,000,000 times in the past 30 yrs. It is definitely less populated than the more eastern midwestern states, but it does not have the rural poverty that Plains10 speaks of in Kansas. Mostly you see well-tended farms/ranches and little towns. I have stopped in a few. Kearney and Ogallala (sp?) are tourist traps, and have been since the Oregon trail days. It's a shame about Kansas, that's for sure.
Generally, the bigger towns in Kansas are in fairly good shape. It is the very rural counties that have many ghost towns. This is not because they have poverty problems, but that much of the population has left for better opportunities elsewhere over time.
The decline in the rural areas of the high plains is so severe that I have seen abandoned gas stations even along areas of I-70. Also, several gas stations have closed over the past few years. I think their is one stretch of the interstate where their are no gas stations for 40-50 miles. The idealized view of living in a small town in the Great Plains is a myth. A lot of people who live in urban areas will not understand this unless they live out on the plains themselves for more than a year.
Yeah you really enlightened me and a lot of others on living in the actual Great Plains. Here on the East Coast people hear about Plains and think "Dances With Wolves", which was filmed in South Dakota. The western Plains do looked parched at least during the summer from the air...actually more similar to flying over the western deserts than over Iowa.
I think the "idealized" small town is less a windswept place in western Kansas than a small town in a lush area of Missouri or Indiana or the southern states.
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