US 50 Road Trip ||| Day 1 ||| Eastern Kansas

foreign I'm about to document the Western half of us-50 through the states of Kansas Colorado Utah Nevada and California the entire us-50 covers about 3 000 miles from east coast to West Coast starting all the way in Maryland and ending in Sacramento heading west and this part of the trip is going to be about 1700 miles and starting here at the Missouri Kansas border I'm in Leawood Kansas and it's the town that is basically as soon as you cross over into Kansas you're in Leewood and this is it's pretty much a suburb of Kansas City us 50 was started in the mid-1920s as part of the United States highway system there were a bunch of roads that were started that time like Route 66 and and then 50 and 40 there was a bunch of them and 50 goes right through the middle of the country so it was it was very popular it's very important to connect East Coast to West Coast in the 1920s as people were trying to Head West and people started you know the the automobile started becoming more um you know used rather than going on a train people could hop in a car and drive West and so roads like this were very important and there were small towns that were connected you know along these roads all the way through and then in the 1970s is when the interstate system was started and that's when roads like us 50 and especially the more rural areas were kind of bypassed and a lot of those small towns started to get even smaller whenever I'm doing these road trips I like to go to every town or every former town or every single little dot on the map that is near the road that I'm exploring so we're gonna we're gonna to learn about a lot of different places big and small and actually the bigger places like where I'm at right now I will cruise through really quick and get out of the town and head kind of out into the Wide Open Spaces as quick as I can there's nothing really exciting at the beginning of this trip because as you as we start on 50 we're on Interstate 435 so there's not really a big you know sign to start you're just flying across the highway and right there at the Kansas border is where we will we will get started we'll see a lot more interesting things than the beginning so let's head out on us 50. once again we're starting out on Interstate systems we'll try to be on um the two-lane roads and the original roads as much as we can and but in some places you just can't because all that's left is the interstate so hopefully we'll find a lot of two-lane roads and a lot of interesting places so come along for the ride let's start us 50. all right I get a lot of questions about which map I'm using on my trips so here's the map each state that I go through will be one of these and so let me show you my route we're looking at the green line here so we'll be starting in Leewood approximately this is all Leewood right here and we'll be taking that mostly Expressway over and every time you see like a line like that that means I'm gonna go check out that town and so mainly on expressway and then we'll get off the expressway to go in to some other towns that are maybe actually more original route 50. or us-50 and that'll take us on through to Gardner [Music] thank you [Music] foreign you might wonder why I'm not going to stop in big cities and show you all the stuff to do in a big city it's because there's lots of videos on YouTube you know if you want to know what to do in Kansas City there's a lot better videos than this I'm gonna Breeze through places like that and show you the more out of the way places places that don't get as much attention [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] from Gardner we are on 56 which was the original 50. here's the expressway so we're going to stay there and then right here there'll be a little bit split that I'll talk about when we get there and so I'm not sure exactly where the original us50 was in this range but we're around there we're going to go to towns that are kind of along that sometimes we're on the expressway and sometimes we're not all the way down to Ottawa [Music] oh [Music] right here is kind of an interesting part of the road here in Kansas I've been on 56 going through these last couple towns and I mentioned how they were kind of connected a little bit well when they originally started uh us50 it's split right here at this intersection now where it's 56 and 33 and it's split and there was a north us-50 and a South us-50 and the North US 50 went from here you know in the north I guess of Kansas out and then connected back with Garden City in Western Kansas we're gonna follow what's considered more you know uh us50 today which would be the old U.S 50 South and this happened you know a lot of times in roads around the country like if you go through Dallas there's a 35 West and 35 East I believe and so this was a 50 north and 50 South we'll reconnect with that in a couple days but we're gonna continue on the southern route which is today considered us 50. [Music] foreign [Music] foreign just south of Ottawa right here this is old us 50. so we're gonna go on there and all along there are some little towns and some ghost towns it'll be interesting to see and we'll take that it basically goes through Waverly [Music] foreign [Music] as you can see we're basically running parallel with the expressway as we continue to go through towns and then we reconnect with the expressway as we head into Emporia once we get through Emporia there are a bunch of little towns all through here that we'll go check out there's once again Old Highway 50. the splits there this is the two-lane road 50. the we'll take the old 50. [Music] thank you [Music] as we roll through Emporia we're about to hit the area called the Flint Hills and I've done a lot of videos in this area and it's just a beautiful area very underrated area of Kansas that you might not realize as you're driving through us 50. foreign [Music] thank you [Music] things start to open up as we get west of strong City the towns start to get a little farther away and it's really pretty driving a little corner of the map here through Florence and then down to Peabody and we're almost done [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] the final leg of today's trip takes us through Walton and then we're going to finish the day in Newton [Music] foreign [Music] that's the end of day one we have reached Newton Kansas and this is only just a few minutes north of Wichita which is where I live so that's where I'm going to stay tonight so no hotel tonight the rest of the trip I'll be staying in hotels and showing you all along the way where I'll be staying but tonight gonna stay at my place and then we'll get back up early tomorrow we'll start heading west [Music]

Channel: Travel with a Wiseguy

Views: 8,396

Keywords: US 50, US 50 Kansas, Kansas road trip, Eastern Kansas, Leawood, Lenexa, Olathe, Princeton, Clare, Gardner, Edgerton, Wellsville, LeLoup, Ottawa, Homewood, Ransomville, Williamsburg, Silkville, Agricola, Waverly, BETO Junction, Lebo, Emporia, Plymouth, Toledo, Saffordville, Elinor, Strong City, Cottonwood Falls, Elmdale, Clements, Cedar Point, Florence, Peabody, Walton, North Newton, Newton, Wichita, Wiseguy, US 50 road trip, Loneliest Road, Loneliest Road in America, Travel Kansas, Rural Kansas, John Wise

Id: qBVdgfAel-g

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023