Kansas Windmills

Kennon-Green & Co. Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Wealth Management, Global Value Investing

I, my mom, my grandmother, and Aaron are taking a very long weekend.  Everyone else is back at home and the four of us are doing something unusual: We are driving, round-trip, from Kansas City to Denver to Santa Fe and back in a period of only five or six days.  Right now, I am going through the vast expanse of nothingness that is Eastern Kansas and Western Colorado, trying to survive on my iPad cellular connection.  I’m using most of the very long drive as an opportunity to read some science books (biology, neurology, and geological) that have been on my reading list for awhile.

The only thing around are massive windmill farms and trains that are miles long, stretching to the horizon.  The wind farms interest me because they are coupled with the occasional oil derrick, and I know that General Electric produced a lot of the turbines, and some of the windmill fields are run by BP.  I’m curious as to what the royalties are for the landowners who lease the mineral and production rights to the companies.

Kansas Windmills

Windmills in Kansas

 

More Kansas Windmills

More windmills in Kansas …

 

Trains in Colorado

Every once in awhile, massive trains would fill the horizon, looking like something out of a nature book.

What would make someone live out here in the nothingness?  We saw some houses that had no civilization around them for 25 or 50 miles.  You would need a small prop airplane to reach a grocery store in any reasonable time.  Who wants to live like this?  There is so much abject poverty.  We’re talking homes and trailers that cost less than a decent grand piano, with rusted automobiles on the front lawn and rusted fences leaning askew, the result of decades of neglect.

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