Inspired by my 51-day trip last summer across Central Asia by car, I’ve committed to an automobile adventure this year to the center of the US.
It’s marked by a plaque on a pedestal, built by the National Geodetic Survey. It is near a town called Lebanon. In Kansas. The plaque reads:
The GEOGRAPHIC CENTER of the UNITED STATES
LAT. 39°50′ LONG. 98°35′
NE 1/4 – SE 1/4 – S32 – T2S – R11W
Located by L.T. Hagadorn of Paulette & Wilson – Engineers and L.A. Beardslee – County Engineer. From data furnished by U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Sponsored by Lebanon Hub Club. Lebanon, Kansas. April 25, 1940.
Several other teams, each starting in different parts of the country, will meet up with me and my wife on July 6th in Kansas to drink whiskies and swap stories, after visiting a list of required waypoints plus making a few discoveries of our own.
Follow us in real time, and join the trip by seeing it through our eyes in video and photos, which we’ll upload as we make.
As with any great adventure, the destination is just one more point, the last one. But the points that come before, and how you get to them, make up the fertile lands of serendipity and breakdowns, thirst and charity, unreachable horizons and a thousand tiny triumphs.
So we’ll not stick to the highways, but zig and zag as much as possible, searching for the treasures that usually whiz past in a blur on the way to the next gas station. And on July 4th, we’ll be in some random town near the middle of America. And why not?
Wish us luck!