Great Plains Getting there & around

Getting there & around

The region’s main airport is Lambert-St Louis International (314-426-8000; www.lambert-stlouis.com), but it has few direct international flights. Visitors from abroad may be better off flying to Chicago or Dallas.

The car- or motorcycle-less brave will miss most of the best of the Plains. Greyhound (800-231-2222; www.greyhound.com) buses only cover the interstates and don’t enter much of the region at all, but Jefferson Lines (800-451-5333; www.jeffersonlines.com) and Burlington Trailways(800-992-4618; www.burlingtontrailways.com), a smaller carrier that specializes in Great Plains routes, take up the slack, getting you to most major towns and many smaller ones. They both honor Greyhound’s Discovery passes and share Greyhound’s depots.

A few other companies have limited service including Megabus (877-462-6342; www.megabus.com), linking Kansas City to Chicago via St Louis for as little as $8.

Unlike the rest of the US, you can actually get somewhat of a feel for the region from the interstate, since the wide-open spaces know no bounds. Of course, we don’t recommend this. Substantial stretches of Route 66 survive and are covered in the Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma sections. The Great River Road, a well-signed network of roads and highways along the entire Mississippi River, is stunning in Iowa.

Regional driving distances:

St Louis to Dodge City: 595 miles

Des Moines to Rapid City: 625 miles

Oklahoma City to Fargo: 880 miles

Numerous daily Amtrak (800-872-7245; www.amtrak.com) routes across the Plains make getting here by train easy, but getting around by rail is impractical.

Ann Rutledge Between Chicago and Kansas City via St Louis.

California Zephyr Between Chicago and San Francisco via Iowa (including Osceola, south of Des Moines) and Nebraska (including Omaha and Lincoln).

Empire Builder Between Chicago and Seattle via North Dakota.

Heartland Flyer Between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City.

Kansas City Mule Between St Louis and Kansas City.

Southwest Chief Between Chicago and Los Angeles via Missouri (including Kansas City) and Kansas (including Topeka and Dodge City).

Texas Eagle Between Chicago and San Antonio via St Louis.