Postings have been sparse–downright non-existent–because we’ve been wandering through a communications desert for the past few days. Our preference is to stay off the interstates and away from major metropoli as much as possible, which has the unfortunate side-effect of also being absent from anything approaching a potent wireless signal. My regrets for keeping everyone hanging about what we’ve been doing in Kansas, Colorado and Utah.

Driving 400-500 mile days has been a large part of it. The result is that here we are now in Ely, Nevada, a town we’ve visited on other trips. Out here, distance means something very different from back in the East. A sign at the office of campground here in Ely said: Roundtrip to Walmart-398 miles. I don’t think they’re joking. We’ve begun thinking ourselves, “it’s just another 150 miles, piece of cake.”

But going back to three days ago, our day started off with a spectacular bang by touring the newly restored Kansas State Capitol in Topeka. We visited here a couple of years ago, but had the unfortunate timing of arriving on the 4th of July, just as every citizen in Topeka was converging on the State Capitol grounds for the fireworks show. Needless to say, the Capitol was closed. It was worth the wait. After pouring in at least 350 million dollars over the past 14 years (half of that federal funding) to restore it to its early 1900’s state (think heavy Victorian), it gleamed, and the employees were glowing too, bust-ing-their-buttons proud of their new”old” capitol building. Note all the scaffolding in the picture below. The interior is in fine shape. The exterior still needs some work, and they’re also building a new Visitor Center. That will cost another $150 million.

Kansas State Capitol

Kansas Capitol Dome

Much of the rest of the day was spent working our way through the mazes of corn that constitutes most of central Kansas. We stopped briefly in Concordia, Kansas, to see a museum newly formed to commemorate the nearly quarter of a million children who were part of the Orphan Train program that took place from about 1870 to 1910. It was a time when there were too many orphans in the major cities of the East Coast, and too few children in the growing midwest, where a child’s labor on a farm could make a huge difference. So they were collected by the Children’s Aid Society in New York City and sent on trains to towns in the Midwest. This museum, in tiny Concordia in an old train station, is not only a historical museum but also a “clearing house” of sorts for those tracing their roots. (For you literary folk, the recently published book The Chaperone, deals with this topic, and it’s a remarkably story–a great read.) The yard was peppered with delightful children’s sculptures, and below is my favorite.

My next post will be about our fifth day on the road, which we spent in Colorado, touring the Capitol in Denver and then driving through Rocky Mountain National Park.