There's no place like home

We see lots of interesting things along the byways the heartland. We're usually inclined to stop at the odd roadside attractions if we have time. Of course most of them don't end up in the show. But there's something about the oddities of Kansas that called out to us. They demanded an audience. And in season four, those roadside wonders get their due on America's Heartland.

In Goodland, Kansas it's the huge sunflower painting. We discovered it while looking for a place to eat dinner. We didn't find any place to eat besides the hotel restaurant, but did stumble onto the sunflower painting.

But "isn't that a Pizza Hut in the background? Why didn't you eat there?"

Why yes, it is a Pizza Hut. What good eyes you have. The Pizza Hut was closed "due to lack of management" according to a note on the door.

So with no luck finding a place to eat we headed back to the hotel. No...not the "K Inn" across the street from the painting. Despite it's value (less than 20 bucks a night), it appears the K Inn hasn't seen any guests besides stray cats for a while.

There are plenty of interesting things to discover in Kansas. But it takes time. The states tourism motto "As big as you think" is quite appropriate. It's the only state I know that uses its actual geographic size to entice visitors.

Probably wouldn't work for most other states...
Delaware: Yes, we're small. Get over it.
Hawaii: Can't get here by car.

But I digress. You'll also find the geographic center of the U.S. near Lebanon, Kansas. It's at the end of a country road and surrounded by corn fields. While we were there a couple stopped by and snapped a couple of photos. Geography again...

Photographer Steve Riggs asked me to capture the moment. Over his shoulder is the actual marker for the actual geographic center of the U.S. Well, the lower 48. If you throw in Alaska and Hawaii you'll the center is in Butte County, South Dakota. Yes, they have a marker too. No, we haven't been there. Yet.

Our final stop on our Kansas Oddities Tour was the "Garden of Eden." This place is hard to do justice with words. Think lots of cement + kooky old guy trying to make a political statement. He died before it was completed.

His sculptures leave visitors asking lots of questions. And if you want, you can ask them directly to him, despite his decaying state. His body is on display for visitors to see. His plan to support his family after he died: have people pay admission to see his body. And they do...although it doesn't appear that anybody is getting rich off of the Garden of Eden today.

So that's a small slice of the interesting stuff we found in Kansas. You'll see a complete wrapup in episode 409. Oh...I forgot about the World's Largest Ball of Twine. We had so much great stuff from Kansas we had to do a separate story on the giant twine ball. That's coming up in episode 422. Patience. It'll be here before you know it. It'll give you time to plan your trip to Kansas.

Jason