Wichita Museum of Art

Wichita, Kansas

There are 16 museums in Wichita listed in my Streets and Trips software. We have a day so I scribble the names and addresses of eight and we head downtown.


First stop: The Museum of art...a knock-out. I enjoyed it more than the day we spent in the Louvre.


I took about 75 pictures. They made me sign an agreement not to use flash, sell the pictures or take pictures of art on loan to the museum. Too bad. They had a great collection of Inuit scupture on loan.

It's a wonderful place in a lovely setting on the river.

One special feature is a very whimsical blown glass chandlier.

These mid-west cities are full of surprises.... on to the Coleman Camping Gear Museum and Factory Outlet..Then the World Treasures Museum. It's full of dinosaurs, pieces of the Berlin Wall, minerals, laughing Buddas, war stories and other treasures...here are some pictures of Wichita.

Crop Circles

Wichita, Kansas

Mrs. Phred and I dress all in black and check our equipment list:
- 200 feet of rope
- Stakes
- 3 foot planks with attached ropes
- Laser pointer
- Protractors
- Night vision goggles
- Camera

We decide on dinner at the Texas Roadhouse before heading out to the wheat field. It’s really crowded for a Thursday, so we drive west of town and find an empty restaurant called the Siesta Lounge for dinner.

After dark we park the Toyota and unload our gear. It’s going to be hard minimizing footprints in the muddy field. I follow her and step where she steps.

Suddenly, we look up and see a huge glowing saucer shape materialize in the clouds. I snap this one picture.

We feel a strange floating sensation and lose consciousness. When I wake up I find myself naked and strapped facedown on what appears to be an operating table. A group of small gray creatures with large black eyes approach. One appears to be holding a probe of some sort.

Somehow we can understand their thoughts. They are tired of being blamed for cattle mutilations and crop circles. We’ve been swept up in an alien crop circle interdiction program. They implant devices will make us very sick if we even think about making crop circles again

We lose consciousness once more and awake next to the Toyota. We dress and go back to the RV.. “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns are on the TV.

Maybe Tomorrow?

Wichita, Kansas

A woman with a fear of facing the world is reported to have sat on a toilet seat in her boyfriend's apartment for over two years.

Each day he would pass food and water to her and encourage her to come out.

"Maybe tomorrow" was her daily response.

Ultimately, her skin grew around the toilet seat and finally emergency responders were forced to transport both the woman and the toilet seat to the emergency room, where the seat was surgically removed.

Mrs. Phred and I would like to visit Wichita in April. We'll apparently have a hard time now saying, "We're not in Kansas anymore" as a measure of locational weirdness.

Kansas was once a standard for middle American normalcy. When Dorothy was swept into Oz these were her words to her dog Toto. Yes, Toto...we're still in Kansas and it is weird.

Here's the full story from the Associated Press.