Done! Times FOUR!
When Suzanne and I planned our trip to the Midwest we did it with the express purpose of visiting four states in one shot. Both of us are working on getting to all 50 states and visiting Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa got me half way there!
When people heard we were going to this non-vacation destination I was met with a lot of questions. Mostly “Why?” When we met with locals in these states, they had the same question. In fact, one cashier we encountered, hearing we were in Kansas for vacation, replied with one of our favorite quotes: “This ain’t no place for vacation.” But I beg to differ. We live in New York. We are a crowded place with ample opportunity to overwhelm our senses. We truly have it all here. All the people, all the entertainment, all the shopping, and certainly all the traffic. We’ve got a diverse landscape. We’re surrounded by water with beautiful beaches on both coasts. We’ve got tree-lined parks, good areas and bad, and suburban homes to spare. We’ve got THE largest and most populated city in the world at our fingertips. We even have our own cocktail. You know what we don’t have? A prairie. Wide open spaces with big sky. Dirt roads where you’d be hard-pressed to find another car for miles. Corn fields on both sides of the road for as far as the eye can see. Little one horse towns straight out of a movie set. We have EVERYTHING and sometimes, just sometimes it’s nice to see miles and miles and MILES of nothing.
It’s important to see the America we’re not familiar with. Sometimes we get so caught up in our lives here it’s hard to even imagine those fly-over states are a real thing. That we have something to learn from the people who call that part of America home. That no matter how different our lives, we’re all seeking the same American dream. And ass kicking barbeque.
Suggested by Dana Lee
Completed 9/15/17