US Route 36 - The Pony Express Highway

A compilation video of driving US 36 in Kansas from Hiawatha to Oberlin. I drove this route in May 2016.

[Archie]

Drove on this highway many times, from the 1950's until my last trip along 36 in June of 2006. My parents met and married during WW II when my dad was in the Army, stationed in Stockton, California preparing to go overseas. My dad was from Indiana, and my mom grew up in California. Shortly after they married, my dad was shipped to the Aleutian Islands as the Japanese had landed on U.S. soil on the island of Attu, which was an American Territory. He was gone 18 months to start their marriage! After the war, my dad took my mom back to Indiana to live, and he resumed his career as a schoolteacher. He had promised her that he would take her to see her family in California every other summer, and he faithfully did that, starting in 1947. I had two older brothers and was born in January of 1953, so starting that year and ending in 1969 when my grandfather died, I was the lucky recipient of free summers in California, every odd year. Driving Highway 36 from Indianapolis, we drove along this road until we got to Denver, where we caught US 6 & 50, following that all the way to where 6 split off in Utah, and we then stayed on Highway 50 all the way through Nevada. We crossed into California on Highway 50 at Lake Tahoe and continued on 50 down into the Big Valley where my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and many cousins lived. We stayed the entire summer in California, and we repeated this trip nine times through the years! Oh, the stories I could tell. After I graduated from college, I wasted little time before moving to Tahoe, which I swore I would do from the time I was 12 years old. Then, as an adult with my own wife and children, I drove the same old route, skipping the boring Interstate highways, a half dozen times through the years to visit my parents in Indiana. That way, my kids got to see their grandparents and get to know their cousins the same way I did. My parents were married just shy of 52 years when my dad died in 1994. My last trip was in 2006, when I drove back with my youngest son to be with my mother as she was dying. Thanks for posting this video. These Kansas towns were magical to me as a midwestern kid traveling toward California summer adventures!

[rjr-ypuj]

Audio is way too low. Kansas was preeety flat.