 THURSDAY |
TRAVEL DAY |
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We scheduled a pitstop along our route today and it just so happens to be across the street from the Ford Dealership I was at on Tuesday for our oil change.
It was four months ago today that Tricia and I received our COVID booster shots down in Florida. Today is the first day we are eligible to recieve our second booster shot, so we both walked into Walmart and decided to just "git er dun".
As a reward afterwards, we walked next door to an Old Chicago Pizza + Taproom Restaurant and ate lunch. We've been seeing this restaurant chain everywhere the last few weeks and finally decided to give it a try.
Tricia did get a small personal-sized pizza and I elected to go with their meatball sandwich. Was it good? Let's just say, there were no leftovers to take home.
Even as far back as 1939 when they filmed the Wizard of Oz, Kansas was known as a windy place. That's why the setting for Dorothy's house was in Kansas, right?.
We were only halfway into the Tropical Storm Force winds range (39-73MPH), but it sure did "feel like" a hurricane (74+MPH) was brewing outside from "inside THE POD".
It was a relatively calm lake at 10:30AM when we returned from breakfast in town.
Not so calm at 5:15PM during the height of the winds.
UPDATE: Around 6:00PM the winds died down to a mild 15-20MPH range and we thought we were done. Then out of nowhere the winds changed direction and began hitting us from the rear, which bangs the wind meter pole up against the trailer. That won't do, so I went outside to lay the pole on the ground, but just before I did we registered a new record wind gust at 56MPH.
They pretty much founded the town and still today a large percentage of the population can trace their ancestory back to these early pioneers.
That is why they call themselves the "Czech Capital of Kansas" and erected a 20-foot tall Czech Egg (the largest in the world BTW) on the main street through town. All around town you can find more Czech Eggs but they don't measure up to the big one, they're all only 4-feet tall. We found several of them just driving around the downtown area.
There is one sure-fire way to avoid the winds here in Kansas. I know what all you smart alecks are thinking, "Yeah, leave the state". Well that does work, but we're not through here yet.
What also works is what everyone does when the tornado sirens go off, head underground! Since there are no Show Cave Tours anywhere in the state, we found what I consider to be a rather unique way to work around that.
In 2013 a young married couple purchased a 24-acre parcel just outside of the nearby town of Wilson, KS. They offer a 1-hour tour of their storm cellar. However there is an astonishing story that goes along with their storm cellar, it was built by the US Government in 1959 at a cost of over $12,000,000 (that's over $110,000,000 dollars in today's money) and then just abandoned it five years later in 1964.
Of course they didn't pay anywhere near that much, (they paid $300K) it was an abandoned property after all. Actually, there was nothing left behind above ground when the government moved on. Just a 176-foot deep, 52-foot round underground silo!
Has anyone figured out where I'm going with this story? If you guessed that we were going on a tour of a decommissioned Atlas F Missile Base, you would be correct. Over 70 of these underground Atlas F missle silos exist in the United States, most are privately owned and not open to the public. This one however is!
WILSON (KS) ATTRACTIONS
The store only sells Kansas made or Kansas grown products.
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Until next time
