Our next stop on our Road Trip back home to West Virginia was infamous Dodge City, Kansas, where we checked into the Dodge City Hampton Inn https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/ddctyhx-hampton-suites-dodge-city/, again on our Hilton Honors points 🙂 When we asked about nearby restaurants, the check-in clerk suggested Casey’s Cow Town Club: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g38668-d458713-Reviews-Casey_s_Cowtown_Club-Dodge_City_Kansas.html for a good Kansas steak dinner, owned by her father-in-law, and that’s where we went! We had a great evening chatting with Casey during dinner, and he created an excellent cocktail for me with the local Boothill Distillery Prickly Ash Bitters: https://www.boothilldistillery.com/prickly-ash-bitters, Crowne Apple, Soda, and a Tipsy Cherry! I had asked him for something with Boothill Prickly Ash Bitters as I wanted to try it: it’s made from a unique, earthy, and herby blend of botanicals, including prickly ash bark, buchu leaves, senna, coriander, grains of paradise and cubeb peppers, and was revived by Boothill, Kansas’ only soil-to-sip distillery, from a now-defunct company whose products have been out of production since the 1910s! We wanted to stop at the distillery https://www.boothilldistillery.com/ and do a tasting, but learned it wouldn’t be open while we were in town, and I was pleased as punch that Casey not only had it in stock, he was willing to not only let me taste it, but to create a cocktail for me with it! YAY for Casey! We HIGHLY recommend Casey’s Cowtown for a great meal and drinks in Dodge City!
On 12/16 we started our day at the Boot Hill Museum and Cemetery: https://www.boothill.org/ which highlights Dodge City’s glory days as Queen of the Cowtowns with creative, lively, and interactive displays and activities that preserve and interpret the Old West’s rich heritage. In addition to seeing the exhibits in all the stores on Front Street and various other buildings, going to jail, and visiting the graves in the cemetery, learning about the fascinating and notorious people buried there, you can belly up to the bar in the Saloon for a cold sarsaparilla (or a Coke, as Dan did 🙂 ), and buy locally made products at the General Store (as I did!) In the summer they have gunfights, dinners, and Variety Shows at the Saloon which all sound like a Lot of fun!
After the museum we went to Black Jack’s liquor store on 2nd Street, so I could get a bottle of those Boothill Prickly Ash Bitters, and in the process learned of a highly recommended Mexican restaurant for lunch: El Rodeo https://restaurantguru.com/El-RODEO-BarandGrill-Dodge-City, where we had super-tasty Pork Chile Verde, tamales, and Tacos De Trompe, which were mini tortillas topped with marinated rotisserie pork, pineapple, cilantro and onions! It turns out to be the top-rated restaurant in Dodge City on Restaurant Guru, too!
Driving east towards Missouri, we got pulled over on the highway by a Kansas State Trooper for going one mile over the speed limit. You read that right: one mile. Fortunately he let us off with a warning, and was nice about it; when he handed me back Dan’s insurance paperwork and driver’s license, he asked Dan if he had been in the Army in Vietnam, which he obvious had learned while checking us out… He had Dan’s license wrapped in a sanitizing wipe, and offered me one. When I declined and accepted the license with my bare hand (and maskless, to boot), he thanked me for “living dangerously”, and we both laughed… Lovin’ me some Kansas State Troopers!
We stopped for dinner at a Yard House brewery restaurant at the Legends Mall in Kansas City, Kansas: https://www.yardhouse.com/home, which has the world’s largest selection of draft beers, and had a beer sampler that included a strawberry beer much like a Belgian Lambic that I really liked. Dan had a chicken sandwich, and I had their Grilled Korean Beef Street Tacos with gochujang broccoli slaw, sriracha aioli, green onions, and sesame seeds, suggested by our Korean waitress when I asked her about kimchi… It was a Korean-Mexican culinary mashup that actually worked! 🙂
As we drove out of Dodge (LOL), we passed some of Colorado’s (in)famous windmills:
Next: Missouri & Indiana: foodie-winey-boozy fun!
