The sneaky thing about the geography of Kansas is that it's longitudinally exponentially-scaled, with distances between stuff (people, raindrops, ...) exponentially increasing as you go west. No one tells you this, though, so when you're in the western Kansas outpost of Hays, you're actually pretty close to the center of the state. You're almost to Colorado! Just stay awake and you'll be there in like 3 hours. It's OK, your mind is already dulled and your resting heart rate at refrigerator temps. Just... stay awa.... [snore sounds followed by the screech of broadsiding a barb-wire fence at 85 mph]
True story: I was in a bar in Lawrence with a friend late one night, being chatted up by a student of mine. When we asked her where she was from, she said some town in extreme NW Kansas (Bird City maybe? Atwood?).
"I've been there!" my friend said.
"No you haven't." my student said.
"Yes, we went there on a geology field trip last summer. That morning as we left the campsite, the back door of one of the vans was open and and a food cooler fell out. We needed food so we stopped for lunch at a restaurant when we went through that town. The restaurant wouldn't serve us because they said that they only buy enough food for the regulars, because no one else ever comes in."
The girl was quiet for a bit, and said "My mom wrote about that in a letter."
That's amazing. A town that small seems like a whole other world. The pressures and calculations at that scale are so different from medium and large sized population areas.
Kansas City Kansas and Kansas City Missouri are in fact 2 distinct jusridictions, each contribute to the larger Kansas City Metro Area. While there are varying definitions of what jurisdictions comprise the "Metro" one could point to regional planning commision MARC as being the defining entity. Regardless, the KC Metro is geographically large in area as there is quite a bit of unbuildable floodplain land dissecting Kansas City Missouri leading to a fun bit of trivia; The KC Metro has more lane miles of roadway per capita than any other metro in the world. It's not even really close in comparison either.
It’s really part of Kansas City, MO, but there is a 4th called “Kansas City, North” which an extremely confusing concept but refers to the part of Kansas City, MO north of North Kansas City. Suburbs annexed by the bigger city while NKC was left independent.
I once had a job candidate - who clearly had no interest in the job - ask me in an interview "What's it like living in such a flat place?" I thought it was kind of strange, because flat places are just like non-flat places, but flatter. It was unclear what the question was. I answered that I wouldn't know, because it's not flat.
Years ago, I moved from Kansas City to Denver and used to drive back and forth a lot. I remember during my first drive to Denver I noticed my ears were popping and shortly after I discovered that western Kansas sits at almost 4000 feet, but you'd never notice it if you drove up there on I-70.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] thread"I've been there!" my friend said.
"No you haven't." my student said.
"Yes, we went there on a geology field trip last summer. That morning as we left the campsite, the back door of one of the vans was open and and a food cooler fell out. We needed food so we stopped for lunch at a restaurant when we went through that town. The restaurant wouldn't serve us because they said that they only buy enough food for the regulars, because no one else ever comes in."
The girl was quiet for a bit, and said "My mom wrote about that in a letter."
But when I was living in K.C. we were jealous of so-much-more cosmopolitan Chicago.
You’re right about the draw though. The KC metro is growing — sort of feels like Denver felt about 15 years ago
http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-tti99ratio.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_metropolitan_area https://www.marc.org/
Also, if you find yourself in the area, Highway 7 is on the Kansas side while 7 Highway is on the Missouri side.
The area north of the river is referred to as the Northland.
Everybody in Kansas calls it K-7
Reminding me of the song "Wellsville" by the never-made-it band, The Embarrassment from Wichita, Kansas.
"We stopped just past the Flint Hills, there's a sign, it was Wellsville."
https://youtu.be/vWm6-htMu4U
furiously takes notes
Totally a terrible place to live. Don’t come here ;)