Dorothy, we made it to Kansas!
The next morning of our Road Trip from West Virginia to Colorado (11/29/2020) we headed from Illinois to Kansas, crossing the river from East St. Louis, Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri, and driving went on I-70 through Missouri. We passed the village of Burnt Prairie, Illinois and I had to do some research: Why did a town formerly called Liberty change its name to Burnt Prairie? I have yet to find out…
We stopped for a break at a beautiful lookout point in the Weldon Spring Conservation Area https://www.visitmo.com/things-to-do/weldon-spring-conservation-area in St. Charles, MO:
We then went to the Daniel Boone Homestead at Lindenwood Park in Defiance, MO, where we got a private tour from their top docent! The nearly 300 acre site includes The Historic Daniel Boone Home and Village historic sites with a dozen buildings that originated from within 50 miles of the property. The general store, school house, and grist mill offer a peek into life on the Missouri frontier, and I found two cool souvenirs in their gift shop to take home: “old timey” popping corn on the cob, and a cookbook of Lewis and Clark recipes!
Defiance, MO is Missouri Wine Country (Yay!), and so we got to stop at two excellent wineries that afternoon that I found on my iPhone’s GPS: Chandler Hill Vineyards: https://www.chandlerhillvineyards.com/, where we had a lovely brunch with Missouri wines and live music:
And the lively and fun Defiance Ridge Vineyards: https://www.defianceridgevineyards.com/, where we enjoyed a tasting of their wines, bought some, and enjoyed more live music, and dancing, as well as an art exhibition! THIS IS WHERE YOU WANT TO BE RIGHT NOW!
That evening we had a great dinner of Real Kansas City Ribs and Burnt Ends at the competition-famous Q39 BBQ in Kansas City, Missouri! https://q39kc.com/ While Dan enjoyed his Irish Coffee, I treated myself to an excellent and unique Smoked Old Fashioned Cocktail, made with their house-smoked honey!
We spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Topeka, Kansas, again on our IHG Rewards Club Points, and slept like logs! We truly love IHG Rewards Club and Hilton Honors Points- they saved us about two thousand dollars on this trip!! And in the morning (11/30?2020) we began driving thru Kansas:
We discovered on our GPS that the OZ Museum in Wamego, KS: https://ozmuseum.com/ was on our route- with The Yellow Brick Road right across the street! We were actually on The Road To Oz!
The Oz Museum is a great little museum with tons of excellent exhibits pertaining to everything Wizard of Oz: books, films, theatre, music, art, puppets, toys- you name it! I literally started crying at one of the exhibits: my favorite childhood toy from the 1960s, Showboat, was in a glass case, a veritable museum relic… making me feel 104 years old, and very wistful and sad… Showboat was a pink, plastic, paddle-wheel theatre boat, that came with play scripts, including The Wizard of Oz, cardboard backdrop scenery, and little character pieces, so you could perform the plays on the showboat stage. Thanks to my actress grandmother, Tanya Mesirow Rivkin, I grew up loving theatre and acting, and I vividly remember “performing” Heidi on Showboat, dropping the cardboard backdrops of the Alps into the slots on the sides of the little boat…
We then discovered the Oz Winery: https://www.ozwinerykansas.com/ only a few doors down from the museum, but as it hadn’t yet opened for the day, we grabbed a bite first at the 4th and Elm Bar & Grill, which makes The Best jalapeno-centric burger I have ever had! Their irresistible “Firecracker Burger”, topped with grilled jalapenos, jalapeno poppers, a jalapeno ranch sauce, and pepper jack cheese, is a chilehead’s dream come true!
After lunch we then went back to Oz and did a tasting flight of wines at the Oz Winery, and, yes, bought some wine from Oz to take home- how could we not?! We spent that night at the Holiday Inn Express in Colby, Kansas, again on our IHG Rewards Club Points. 🙂
Tasting at the OZ Winery 
OZ Winery wines 
Oz Winery wines
The 1879 Old Dutch Windmill of Wamego, Kansas:
On 12/1 we continued our drive across Kansas, stopping at Ft. Riley https://home.army.mil/riley/ in the hope of visiting the base’s US Cavalry and First Infantry Division Museum: https://home.army.mil/riley/index.php/about/museums, but it was closed. 🙁 We did get to see a cool train on display, so it wasn’t a total loss!
We stopped for a surprisingly nice lunch (with wine!) at Shiraz Restaurant in Goodland, Kansas, where we learned that this might be the last indoor dining experience we’d be able to have, as Denver, Colorado had apparently gone Covidiot nuts yet again, banning all indoor dining- in December! Goodland, Kansas’ claim to fame is having (right next to Shiraz), The World’s Largest Painting on an Easel, created by Canadian artist Cameron Cross as part of the Van Gogh Project. The giant, 80-foot tall easel weighs 40,000 lbs., and supports a 24 x 32 foot reproduction of Van Gogh’s “Three Sunflowers in a Vase”- Kansas being the heart of Sunflower Country, after all! (The Easel is also listed on the Roadside America web site: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/9183). 
As we plant a Sunflower Meadow across from the Elkhorn Inn every spring, Dan had the great idea of buying a humongous bag of Real Kansas Sunflower Seeds to take home, so we went to a local Feed ‘N Seed store; sadly, we learned that you can only by sunflower seeds in the spring. 🙁 The upside is that this coming spring we intend to order our seeds from Kansas! We tooled around Kansas a bit, visiting the Historic 1857 Beecher Bible & Rifle Church, because when you see a sign on the highway for that you just Have to check it out!
Beecher Bible & Rifle Church 
Poking around on my iPhone’s GPS as dan drove us west, I learned that we were driving thru Kanorado (Kansas-Colorado, duh), which for some odd reason amused me, and I made note of it…
We stopped and spent quite awhile at the Prairie Museum of Art and History in Colby, Kansas: https://prairiemuseum.org/about, an excellent museum of rural, prairie High Plains life that spans 24 acres, and includes the Cooper Barn (Kansas’ Largest Barn, and the 8th Wonder of Kansas Architecture!), Eller House, the one-room Nicol School, Vacin Barn, a Sod House, and the Lone Star Church, where Dan knocked himself out trying to ring the bell! We visited all the historic buildings, as well as the museum itself, which displays an excellent collection of historic county artifacts and memorabilia, as well as the frankly incredible Kuska Collection of dolls, glass, ceramics, clothing, and paintings. The Sod House was especially fascinating for me, as I’d read about them in the Little House on the Prairie books, as well as in non-fiction books covering prairie life during the Pioneer Era.
Probably the most fascinating thing we encountered on this trip was the fantastic Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Created by Samuel Perry Dinsmoor, a retired schoolteacher, Civil War Veteran, and Populist politician, who had moved to Lucas in 1891 and settled on a farm outside of town with his wife in 1905, it is Really Something, as they say…. At the age of 62, Dinsmoor, who, in his 1927 guidebook to the Garden of Eden, wrote that he was crazy: “I am bughouse,” he declared, cheerfully- bought property in Lucas and set about building his “creation”, starting with his “log cabin” carved from limestone, and the first house in Lucas with electricity and running water, which he called “the most unique home for living or dead on Earth.” Completed in 1907, over the next 22 years he added 150 different, massive sculptures to the Garden of Eden, representing his interpretation of the world’s creation, history, and politics. Utilizing 113 tons of concrete, he created mammoth insects, angels with massive wingspans, 40-foot tall trees, frolicking children, Adam & Eve, numerous political statues… and his own tomb, a 40-foot high pagoda-style stone and concrete mausoleum for his embalmed self and his first wife… Read more on Roadside America: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2103
Lucas is, very apparently, a tremendous center for “outsider art”, as their Grassroots Arts Center proves, and I wish we could have had a full day at least to explore it! We tried, unsuccessfully, to find several other art installations in Lucas, including Florence Deeble’s Mount Rushmore; we did find Bowl Plaza, a truly spectacular restroom, but didn’t get to go inside, as it was getting dark, and we had to keep going… 🙁
We spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites, Colby, Kansas, again on our IHG Rewards Club Points, and again is was nice and clean, and we got a good night’s sleep…
Next stop: Denver!
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Road Trip: Colorado Wine & Foodie Fun in Breckenridge, Grand Junction, & Palisade! – We Live In The Country! · January 3, 2021 at 3:53 am
[…] the Alps from my childhood “Showboat” productions of Heidi… (See my previous post here for more on […]
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