BootsnAll Travel Network



Local Flavor

Our time in Denver was spent with old friends, catching up on each other’s lives, eating good food… We went to see the Bodyworlds exhibit, a fascinating way to learn more about the human body. It made me realize how much we take for granted that our bodies work relatively well most of the time, and made me feel like I should be doing everything I can to help out. After Aaron left town I spent time with travel friends I’d met on my trip around the world as well as elementary school friends I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years! Reuniting with five former classmates was a lot of fun–it’s amazing that people really look inherently the same even after so much time has passed. It also snowed while I was in Denver, so Rolo and I had our first “winter” drive together… luckily it didn’t stick to the roads even though it was snowing like crazy, and we made it back to my friend Gina’s place in Highlands Ranch without any problem. I think my California license plates probably helped clue in the other drivers to my concern and my reasonable desire to drive less than 60 mph while they cruised past.

From Denver it was just a five-hour drive or so to my cousin Keri’s place in Hays, Kansas, mostly via I-70. We went to a local brewery to hear some live music, a few local college bars where we were probably the oldest patrons, had some tasty food (a must anywhere I go)… a nice relaxing few days. It’s truly small-town there; everywhere we went Keri was running into people she knew! As I plotted my route from Hays to Chicago, Keri recognized that by taking the back roads I’d be passing right through the area where her boyfriend was headed for a friend’s wedding, so she came along for part of the ride, and I even got to be passenger and co-pilot for a while since she knows how to drive stick. I had been planning to drop her off at the wedding reception and keep driving, but when we arrived in the small eastern Kansas town of Onaga (oh-NAY-ga), they invited me inside for a bit and I ended up staying all night!

I should’ve known how things would end up when I went up to the open “bar” and said “I’ll have a Pepsi with just a little bit of Jack in it” and the guy promptly dumped about 3 shots worth of Jack Daniels into the glass, and as I protested he drawled (who knew Kansans had an accent?), “Yer not from ’round here, are ya?” Kansas is definitely a whole ‘nother world. Dinner was pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, marshmallow-jello salad (with real strawberries–Keri declared it the best she’s ever had), and dinner rolls. The band, Jimmy Dee and the Fabulous Destinations, is apparently well-known in Kansas and their set list of oldies kept everyone dancing all night, despite the outrageous get-ups of the band (black shirt and pants, red ties, except for the singer with white pants, red shirt, white tie) and the wacky antics of the lead singer–he reminded me of Paul Schaffer from the Letterman show, but way cheesier, and Keri said he was like a Will Ferrell impression of a wedding singer. I ended up having entertaining conversations with some small-town guys who I had pretty much nothing in common with (one guy exclaimed, sort of apropos of nothing, that he HATES books), but early on one of them suggested we not be offended by anything else the other said and just find out what we could–a cultural exchange of sorts. I argued, in vain, against his statement that money buys happiness, and it wasn’t until the next day in the car that I realized what I was really trying to say and couldn’t come up with at the time–while money might make you happy, having it certainly doesn’t guarantee happiness. He still might not have agreed with me, but at least I would have had something to say, other than just shrugging my shoulders, when he said “you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be happy if you had xxx amount of money.” It was an interesting night, and exactly that “local” flavor one craves while traveling. While the Kansas farm boys headed out to the parking lot to drink some more, then sleep in their truck until one of them was sober enough to drive home, we headed to a local Super 8 to bed down for the night, only to be interrupted an hour later by some wedding-party stragglers dragging a keg. It’s amazing I managed to get any sleep that night. Before I continued my drive the next morning, Keri, her boyfriend, and I had a truly down-home American breakfast, complete with biscuits and gravy and, for me, an American cheese and bacon omelet, in the town of Holton, which had a very cute central square around the courthouse with lots of old-school businesses. I would encounter many similar squares as I continued my drive through the southeastern corner of Nebraska and all along southern Iowa on Highway 2.



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One response to “Local Flavor”

  1. rebecca says:

    you met a book hater? oh my. sounds like something out of a horror movie. just that part though. the rest was real slice of life. loved reading about all the food and the great band.

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