Cross-Country Road Trip Day 18
I woke up at 5m but drifted back to sleep. I finally got up around 5:45 and got dressed. When I came out of the bathroom, Wanda was making moved and getting up. Billy complained about us moving too fast in the morning. LOL
We had a really nice breakfast at the Hampton Inn with lots of options. I had a pile of sausage, a little bit of eggs and biscuits with gravy. Eating all that made me a tad groggy on our drive through Kansas.
We drove through Kansas City and learned that both the Chiefs and the Royals are from the Missouri side, not the Kansas side of the city.
We stopped to see a cement teepee in Lawrence, KS. Further up the road near Topeka, we stopped to see Truckhenge, a really funky place run by an old hippie guy. He seems to like to collect junk and make some sort of art out of it. The places was kind of in chaos, but kind of cool, too.
We then drove to a little town called Wamego that had an Oz Museum. It was wonderful and so well organized. I highly recommend a visit if you are ever in the area. Outside, an alley had an archway that said Yellow Brick Road where the bricks were painted gold.
After the museum, we ate lunch at the Westport on Main in town. When we arrived, the place was packed and we would need to wait to be seated. I asked an elderly couple if I could borrow a chair for my mother-in-law. Instead, they said we could join them at their table. We had great conversations and really enjoyed both the lunch and the company.
Next to the museum, there was a place called Toto’s Tacos that others recommended. There were also painted Totos all over the little town (kind of like the former Pigs on Parade here in Seattle). There was also the Oz Winery where we did some tasting and we all bought bottles of wine to take home (Billy drank all his in one evening).
We continued on to Wilson, KS, the home of the largest Czech population in the U.S. There, the community got together and painted a giant egg in the pattern of their tradition. While admiring the giant egg, a local stopped her car and had a a long conversation with Wanda about the town.
Everyone was so friendly. In fact, we think that out of all the places we visited, Kansas was the most friendly state.
Our next stop was to the Monument Rocks National Landmark. It was so strange to see these giant formations after so much flatness in the the state! There were a lot of cliff swallows there building dirt nests near the tops of the rocks.
Other stops were to the Buffalo Bill Monument (he’s on horseback shooting a bison) and a giant Van Gogh replica painting on a giant easel.
After we got to Colorado Springs and checked into the hotel, Billy left with some local entertainer friends/clients for an evening out with them. Wanda and I were sleeping by the time he got back.
