Outside of New York, I have spent more time in Kansas than any of the other states in the country. My first visit was in 2005 and I have visited once per year every year since, except for 2009. I have a friend here and generally do volunteer work for church related causes. Plus it's also nice to be able to get a different perspective of a state rather than through sightseeing and hotels.
I started out in Kearney, Nebraska. I considered looking at Fort Kearney, which was only a few miles from the hotel. However, driving into the park it did not seem all that impressive. It would take time and I was definitely saturated with sightseeing. I just wanted to get to Wichita, Kansas to relax. It would be over five hours to drive there. The first thing I had to do was drive east on I-80 for almost an hour. This was a familiar route since I had gone from Kearney, Nebraska to Wichita, Kansas in my 2008 cross country trip. The route was identical. I even stopped at the same gas station in Nebraska after I got off I-80. After fueling up, I headed south on a US route that went from Nebraska into Kansas. I was on the cell phone with a friend as I approached the state line. Shortly after getting into Kansas, the call was lost and there was no signal. It's funny because I passed through some very empty areas in Nebraska and had a good signal. That US route that I was on became I-135 in Kansas.
Despite Kansas' reputation for being flat (and it is in several places), this particular part had lots of rolling hills and trees. I would say that Nebraska and Oklahoma are even more flat than Kansas.
As I said, this route was identical to the route I took in 2008. So, it was somewhat boring. Still, it was great to be back into the state where I really picked up my travel interest. When I visited Kansas in 2005, the only other states I visited had included all six of the tiny New England states, plus New Jersey, Alabama, and a brief drive through less than a mile of Pennsylvania (without even getting out of the car). My friend in Kansas is a map collector. He has been to all fifty states, and basically challenged me to see as many as I can.
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In 2006, I did my first solo driving trip to a section of the country outside of the Northeast. I flew in to Kansas to visit my friend, and on one day I drove to Oklahoma and then drove just inside of Missouri. The Oklahoma trip had a real attraction (the National Cowboy Museum) but for Missouri, I was just happy to have gotten to a truck stop four miles into the state. Since I didn't know anything about reserving hotels back in 2006, I had to be back in Wichita for the night. That trip allowed me to "dip my toe" in the water and made me hungry for more. Since that time, due to its location, Missouri has become one of the states I have visited most frequently though some of those visits were token visits.
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