Topeka (and the rest of Kansas)

We got to Topeka early in the evening on Tuesday.  It was our shortest leg of this trip as Kansas City, MO and Topeka, KS are little more than an hour apart.  Once again, HotelTonight found us a beautiful place to stay--the Senate Suites--in the heart of Topeka.  [This is the only hotel we've stayed at that had actual keys for the room!] We had a fully functional, 1920's apartment at our disposal--not that we needed it for such a brief stay.

                                 

We found a local micro-brewery called The Blind Tiger, had some Texas nachos and a meal, then returned to the hotel for the night.  We awoke the next morning to a cleansing thunderstorm.  It was just enough to cool the area off a tad since it was in the high 90's when we arrived the day before.

Ad Astra

From our hotel, we could easily view the State Capitol only two blocks away. This statue of a Kansa American Indian was only recently added to the dome.

We used Yelp! to find us a local coffee and breakfast shop called Juli's.  The food was good, coffee was great, but it was the conversation that Pav struck up with a very friendly, local lady that made our morning.  The woman in the next booth was Cindi (on the left in the pic) and she was at Juli's having breakfast with her daughter, Lisa (center).  Cindi recently returned to the area from Arizona, and Lisa owns a vintage clothing and furnishing store, Merchant. It's housed in what was formerly a high-end shoe store created in 1946 in a turn-of-the-20th century building. The front of the shop and storage areas behind have original, one-of-a-kind hand sculpted doors, paneling, alcoves, niches and cabinets. The back of the building still has its circa 1915 structure with tin ceilings, stained oak doors, windows, and balustrades, with lettering stenciled on opaque glass.   

Left to right: mannequin, Cindi, Lisa & Toni

Tim

Driving straight through the heart of Kansas on I70, we saw beautiful landscapes of rolling fields of corn relieved by copses and stands of trees, mostly oak but others, too, to give variety to the gorgeous spectacle. As we moved west, the land got flatter and more golden. Herds of beautiful cattle, in homogeneous groupings of gold or black for the most part, grazed, were lying down in the heat or gathered in the shade of large road signs, seemingly content and unaware of their fate.

Standing alone atop a small rise, we saw this beautiful church and Tim got off the highway and took us back along bumpy dirt roads to get some pictures.

Excelsior Lutheran Church (front)

Excelsior Lutheran Church (back)

But mostly, it was the sky that dazzled. Great, big sky. The Wizard of Oz does not prepare you for the beauty of the Kansas landscape. (Well, Dorothy Gale lived there in the 30's during the Dustbowl so maybe I'm not being fair.) We had to stop and take pictures.