Ruby slippers and a yellow brick road

Yes, Wamego, Kansas, (see main street at left),tiny as it is, has those ruby and yellow things (slippers and bricks) and believe me this town is tiny, even from the point of view of an Ellensburg, Washington, native. But by the time we abandoned Kansas City, and 3 days of BBQ, for Kansas-the-state, I was not thinking of ruby or yellow. I was craving greens! So when we found the supermarket on the outskirts of little Wamego, out there on the highway, and went inside to purchase makings for a picnic lunch, and my spouse suggested we add to his leftover BBQ chicken, I politely declined and made a beeline for the salad bar. Lettuce never looked so good! We then followed the signs to the "city park" in Wamego. That was the littlest city park I have ever set eyes on. It had less open space than a typical Seattle "parking strip." But what it had, was green. And it had a bench. And even though it was high noon, there was no competition for seating. So picnic we did. Then we went to the Oz museum in the middle of "downtown" Wamego. There I took some pictures.

For Carmelita, I shot photos of the ruby slippers, wishing I could bring the slippers themselves back to add to her collection(s). I mean, those shoes have a dance or two left in them. And speaking of dancing, we saw film of a wonderful dance by Ray Bolger (as the scarecrow) which got cut from the movie as it finally appeared. The man was a dancing genius. Limp as al dente spaghetti, but as expressive as tall grass waving in the wind. It was worth going all the way to Kansas to see that dance!

And of course for Carol Anne, I had to take a picture of this Wizard of Oz quilt. It's not the only quilt I saw on my travels. There was a whole quilt booth at Toad Suck Daze, for Heaven's sake, but it was indeed one of the most unusual pieces of needlework I encountered. It is fun to have your friends with you when you see new things, if only in your mind's eye and to wonder how their eyes might see the sights you are taking in. And you always want to bring back a little piece or two of your trip to share: "Lookee here at what I found, Mom."

Inevitably our afternoon in Wamego and Oz led us back to the interstate and south to Wichita. My plan was to go in search of the Wichita Lineman while the spouse tried on the Kansas links for size. But a rainy day foiled our plans. We opted for a movie and museum tour instead. I couldn't begrudge this state, tornado capitol of the world, a morning of rain. In fact, after seeing what Dorothy went through, I felt we had been let off easy.

"There's no place like home, Auntie Em," I remember thinking as we dropped off our rental car and boarded the shuttle for the OKC Airport. And "We're not in Kansas, any more," my subconscious whispered as our jet eased down over Puget Sound.

We say goodbye to Missourah

. . . with a fond glance back at our hotel, the Raphael, a lovely old hotel situated just across the water from a Mission style shopping complex called The Country Club Plaza. It's a few miles from downtown, but a very nice place to stay with plenty of park and open space for the wanderer. I did a little shopping while the spouse treated himself to a golf outing and I spent some time strolling along the water and sitting in the sun reading an Arkansas military sharpshooter mystery/thriller. We were in for a long day of driving through amber fields of last year's stubble.

I say Missouri; you say Missourah

It seems to depend on where you grew up, how you pronounce the state's name. As we travel we have been soaking up some "road trip literature," if there is such a genre. The spouse checked out an audio book of short stories by Richard Russo. One we listened to on our drive from Arkansas to Missouri was about a woman and her son from the Northeast on a road trip that took them through Missouri. She made fun of folks who say "Missourah." After a dinner out (barbecue of course) in KC we watched "Transamerica," also about a road trip from east to west - this one with a father and son. Felicity Huffman plays the dad. Good film. It is raining in Wichita; so we are going to see "United 93," which may not be the best choice the day before an airplane trip; but oh, well. . .

But to backtrack: I don't have a lot of photos of Kansas City. It is a very photogenic city with an amazing amount of open space. Parks and greenbelt. In fact on one of my first days there I read a criticism of the development of the city that included the observation that the city has too much park space. The critic also said the small beltway that encircles the top half of the city is a bad design. It's so small that it is hard to get on and off of it and makes the city driver act like a diner who has stuffed himself (or herself) so full of ribs and beans and French fries and white bread and creamy coleslaw that he or she is being strangled from the middle up and down...

Which is to say we "et" a lot of beef in KC. And not a lot else. Our friend and travel editor Terry Taz, who lived a spell in KC sent us to Arthur Bryant's BBQ, a no frills rib joint in a rundown neighborhood where the cook/server slapped some sliced pork directly onto my red plastic try, evidently because I was a little slow to hand him my plate. It was good - very good and so was the beer we washed it down with. My spouse had the ribs, which he consumed with much gusto. There's a lot of gusto available in KC, but not much broccoli. The same friend sent us to Garozzo's, an Italian restaurant, also a neighborhood spot, where the service was a little more polished and there was some evidence of greenery on my plate. And best of all we were there on half price wine night! Who knew Kansas City boasted an Italian community? Finally we balanced things off with a visit to another KC BBQ chain called, appropriately enough, Jack's Stack. More ribs. By now ribs is something my body only remembers having. You sure can't see them.

Clearly I was too busy dining to take many pictures. It's that kind of city.

There are vegetables in Kansas City. I saw them myself at the City Market, a farmer's market. The selection of local veggies was next to nil, it being too early in the season for local produce, but the market was worth a visit anyway. We had great lattes with our breakfast at a non-chain coffee shop at the market. City skyline is visible in the top photo.

For Doxey

The Arkansas "mountains" don't have many sheer rock cliffs like this for climbing. In fact I would venture to say that while there are some cliffs in the state, neither the Ouachitas nor the Ozarks has a climbing wall just like this, i.e. a fiberglas shell held up by a truck. The youngsters at Toad Suck Daze seemed to enjoy it. The spouse wouldn't let me take a shot at it; so I can't tell you whether it was the thrilling experience it appeared to be.

This will have to be my final "Toad Suck photo" because I now have Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Ks, as well as a good part of the state of Kansas under my belt. It is a rainy day in Wichita so I will play blog catch up.

Toad Suck Daze

The big green blob on the right is the official inflated Toad. The thousands of people who showed up are not visible in this photo because it was taken Friday morning when booths and attractions were still being set up. By nightfall the streets were curb-to-curb full of Arkansans - and a couple of Washingtonians. We don't know if we were the tourists who came from the farthest away to Toad Suck daze, but we sure had a good chance of winning the title, if they'd only had a contest.


No midway is complete without a ferris wheel. We especially enjoyed watching this small fry version. There were midway games, and several blocks lined with booths selling handcrafts. If I'd hand room in my suitcase I could have brought home a genuine Ozark quilt for Carol Anne. It was hard to resist the elk caller. Of course there was food, much of which was offered on a stick: sausage-on-a-stick, chicken-on-a-stick and alligator-on-a-stick, for example. We tried barbecue from the Hog Pen booth. The spouse wanted to abandon our comfortable seat at the picnic table next to the booth when the booth began to broadcast all-too-realistic hog sounds, but I made him stay. We sampled the roasted corn, which was excellent. Alas, I was by then too full for a turkey leg, bucket of spicy crawfish, cotton candy or even a stawberry shortcake.

The legend of Petit Jean

A friendly woman at the Arkansas Welcome Center suggested the lodge at a state park when we told her we were looking for a place to spend the night between Ft. Smith, just inside the state line, and Conway, where we had reservations. We picked Petit Jean, mostly for its location a little closer to our destination. It was a great choice.

After a fine dinner of fried catfish (him) and Southern fried chicken (me), accompanied by muscadine juice (Not fermented. This is a state park, remember.) we waited for dark then sat on top of this mountain bathed in starlight and the fragrance of honeysuckle and watched lightning bugs.

The park and the lodge are at the top of Petit Jean Mountain, named for a French girl who followed her fiance there by disguising herself as a man and working as a cabin "boy" on the ship upon which he was sailing. Her deception was discovered only when she became very ill and, ultimately, died on the mountain. There is a grave they say is hers.

The lodge and trails were built in the 30s by CCC and have been nicely updated. The mountain isn't steep or craggy, but is rock, mostly limestone, where it isn't covered in mixed hardwood and pine forest. There are lots of wildflowers this time of year.

Welcome to Arkansas

No, this hut is not our room at the lodge. I am not sure what it is, but I can tell you it is made of grape vines. It caught my eye as we left the first winery we visited in Arkansas, a place called Aux Arc and pronounced Ozark. There are at least 5 wineries in the state and 4 of them are in the area we visited and they are owned by the same family. In addition to Cabernet and Merlot they make wine with a native (to the U.S.) grape called Cynthiana and a local grape called Muscadine. The muscadine doesn't grow in large clusters like most grapes I have seen, but singly or in clusters of two or three grapes. The wine is exceedingly sweet, almost like a liqueur. The unfermented juice, which we had later with our dinner, tastes faintly of pears. Wild, the grapes climb trees, which making picking them a challenge.

And there were children and ladybugs

And this little guy was just one of them. It was steamy in there, but there were orchids and bananas and plants that I recognized as "house plants" because I had only seen them growing in houses. I took a lot of pictures and this is just one. If you click on it and make it big you will see the ladybugs he is so carefully distributing on the plants. I had them clinging to my fingers and wrist as well. My spouse thought the ones that weren't very active were "dead" but I didn't think so. I think they were just lying low until the festivities were over.

This is so amazing

I don't know where to start although I guess Oklahoma City isn't a bad place. It is definitely not a bad place. I liked OKC a lot, starting with the Memorial, which broke my heart in a good way - if that's possible. This is a gentle city that did not deserve what happened here. I didn't understand, until I had visited the museum, the impact such an act of violence has on a community, like the rings in water a tossed pebble makes, in this case bloody, hurtful rings. Imagine victims, who are "survivors" feeling guilty because they survived? It makes sense when you see it all in context. And because of that the memorial is a powerful statement. I feel lucky to have walked on this ground and read and listened to the words of the people who experienced this awful consequence of freedom.

Cowboy Art

While the spouse was out hitting a little white ball around a field with a stick yesterday I went to see Cowboy Art. The spouse thinks I went to a museum called the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. I guess he hasn't heard about Cowboy Art. I have lots of great pictures of Art and a swell shot of a Ronald Reagan statue, some posted below. The big plaster statute below on the left is called "End of the Trail and was at San Francisco for a while. I didn't take photos of my favorite objects, which were paintings, because they didn't allow photos in the gallery. I recognized Remington and Russell, but the work I liked best was by a Russian painter named Nikolai Fechin. The Frye in Seattle has some of his work; so I will get to see it when I am home.