Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Driving Across Kansas Sucks

I've lost count of how many times I have crisscrossed the USA by car. Each interstate adventure has been a little different. But when I tell people about these trips, the first comment is almost always something like "Ugh, but you have to drive across Kansas." Take it from a guy who's done it a dozen times: Crossing Kansas is wonderful.

The lighting of a Kansas sunset makes for some truly golden car and portrait photography, and I'll share some of my recent faves throughout this little essay. But that's just one aspect of what makes a Kansas crossing special.

Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma share a similar terrestrial aesthetic of infinite flatness. But I think people are inclined to name-drop Kansas in this context because it's in the dead middle of contiguous America. Traversing the Kansan section of I-70 is a long stretch of many coast-to-coast road trips. Or maybe people remember it from The Wizard Of Oz, I don't know.

"It's so boring," I'm told. "There's nothing to see." Au contraire, my friends. You can see further, in more directions, from I-70 in Kansas than you can from any interstate on the eastern seaboard.

Stop groaning! I'm serious—wide open space is something worth appreciating. Do you like sitting on the beach and looking out at the ocean? Wind-swayed stalks of wheat have a peaceful animation similar to waves on a calm sea.

Zooming by plains of crops at a highway gallop is like blazing across open water—except instead of having to be entirely self-sufficient like you do in a boat, there are plenty of opportunities to slow down and grab fuel or snacks or a short walk every hour or so.

Crossing Kansas feels epic. Your vehicle is an insignificant little vessel exploring the depths of the country's heart, hurtling toward an unreachable horizon under an enormous sky. The speed limits are high and traffic is (usually) low. Boredom? I don't get it. The prevailing feeling I have at warp speed on I-70 between KC and Denver is reverence.

The Sunflower State is a keystone of our country, in an abstract geographical way and in a very real functional sense. Wheat, corn, beef, soybeans—these are major cogs in the machine of America. And there's nothing like spending a full day crossing a single state full of that stuff to help you appreciate the significance of it.

And finally, there are the sunsets.