There's no place like home

We stopped in Liberal, Kansas to see Dorothy's house. It was a bit sad how rundown the Munchkin's Playground was.

And Dorothy...what a lovely thing she is...Dad, why didn't you tell me you had a diner in Hooker, Kansas?Also, check out the pack job on that white pick-up. I'm glad the white plastic chairs were considered important enough to pack.

-Little Burger

Flint Hills Rodeo

We stayed at a lovely Super 8 in Emporia, KS on Friday. Though I could not understand everything the guy at the front desk asked as I checked in, I was impressed at the customer service. He called 5 minutes after we got to our room to make sure we had found everything okay. I informed him that we did...it wasn't hard considering our room was the first one at the top of the stairs, which you could see from the hotel desk. My favorite part of our stay (well, second favorite since the first had to be the mini powdered doughnuts at breakfast) was this sign that was posted in the bathroom:

We left our hotel at about 4:45 for dinner at Bobby D's diner. We were 2 of 5 people eating at such a time. Yes, perhaps the rest of them were over the age of 70... Anyway, we each had a pulled pork sandwich with cheesy potatoes, a house specialty the menu told us. The food and my root beer were phenomenal! And we were leaving the restaurant by 5:13. Now that's a good dining experience.

We stopped at the glorious Super 8 to get Becky's camera equipment and then we were off. EJ pulled up to the Flint Hills Rodeo at about 6:15 and kept driving. There were not nearly enough cars in the parking lot for us to go in yet. I attempted to kill time in the surrounding towns. That took 15 minutes so by 6:30 we were pulling into the parking lot. That gave us 90 minutes to check out the "trade show" before rodeo time. Little did we know that the trade show would be 4 booths of cowboy artwork sketched on washboards. I bought us some cans of beer (it was hard to resist buying a coozie for an extra $1) and we took our places. Since we were there so early, no one took our ticket when we entered the "reserved" bleacher area with our "general admission" tickets. So we parked ourselves at the top of the bleachers so we'd have a backrest and then attempted to people watch until show time. I say attempted because, as you will see from the following video, there weren't many people to watch.


Did you like that music? It kept rotating from country to some random 80s rock song and then the last song before rodeo time was....you guessed it...The Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta feeling." Fitting, right?

Yeehaw,
Meghan

Destination Tacos

Another long day in the car but at least it started out with waffles at the complementary breakfast in Kansas. Meg and I shared the breakfast nook with 2 fantastic individuals of the senior citizen variety. If I had to guess I would say their names were Charlie and Irma. They were traveling from Arizona to Illinois so in exchanging pleasantries they asked us about construction along the roads up to Illinois, while we inquired about the forest fires in New Mexico. We then wished each other well and were on the road.

We traveled westward through the rest of Kansas, the Oklahoma pan handle, and into our destination state New Mexico. Among the highlights were driving by the John Dillinger hideout and a visit to Dorthy's house in Liberal, Kansas which I would describe as a hole in the wall tourist trap but there were a few fun things to photograph.

Also at a gas station in I believe Greensburg Kansas I saw a mom putting aloe on here red haired kids sunburn I felt bad for the kid, my ginger self can sympathize with him.

For the most part, Meg and I passed the time reading allowed from Cosmo, playing a very interesting and slightly disturbing game of marry date or dump, and passing the same guy along a 2 lane highway 4 times.

Most importantly we arrived safely in Los Alamos, found out there is a Hooker Oklahoma, and got to eat delicious Mexican food for dinner with my brother.MMMMmmmmm delicious tacos.


Here is a bonus photo I took on my phone at the rodeo yesterday Check out the upturned pinkie...now that's class.Adios,
Beck

One Last Rodeo Photo (for my photo people)

I had to take a photo of this kid you can't see it now but whenever a rider came out she was crouched down in the dirt taking photos between the bars. A little Photojournalist in the making, always looking for the right angle. It made me smile. It also made me want to run up to her and tell here she would have a better chance at being Hannah Montana than a Photojournalist with the way the newspaper industry is going.

Some Rodeo Photo-ing

I have been looking forward to going to a rodeo since my last rodeo outing. I love them, I don't know if it is the atmosphere, the animals, the beer, or the incredibly attractive cowboys. (Actually I lied I do know...it's the cowboys but the other stuff doesn't hurt) but something about it makes life perfect.

Meg and I saw a drunk old lady being helped up the stairs by a friend. It's good to know that taking care of drunken friends never goes out of fashion. Since we are getting up at 6 tomorrow and have a long Drive to New Mexico we stuck to one can of beer each.

Time for bed, I'm super stoked to visit my brother Tim in New Mexico tomorrow and Sunday I haven't seen him in 10 months.

Happy Trails,
Beck

Em-por-ia (sung like "Notorious")

We are almost 8 hours into our drive. I took the first driving shift from 5 to about 10:20 when my stomach was ready for PB & J. We stopped somewhere just over the border in Missouri where gas was $3.55! While I investigated the travel plaza, Becky cleaned the bugs off the windshield. Her efforts were for naught though since 10 minutes after being back in the car, the bug blood and guts were baaaaaaaack.




After we lost US 99.5 somewhere in IL, we popped in the scavenger hunt cd the soon-to-be-famous Jennie made us. For each song, she challenged us to take a picture according to something mentioned in the lyrics. It'll be fairly simple to get a pic of a Geek in Pink from the Jason Mraz song (as I believe I packed a shirt in the pink family.) However, the “take a pic of a summer boy you'd like to get” might prove to be tricky. The license plates for Kansas have said “America's Heartland” not “America's Hottieland.”

Best decision of the trip thus far: Packing Hershey's miniatures for the cooler. Nothing like a cold Mr. Goodbar to go along with your 1 o'clock DP.

TTFN, folks.
Meg

P.S. Check out this license plate. Jealous?

Toilet Graffiti Philosophy

I never expected our road trip to get political and I really didn't expect to find political discussion scrawled on the walls of a ladies room stall in the middle of nowhere Illinois, but that is precisely what happened today. Glancing at the bathroom stall walls was like a public forum on immigration laws.

It looked like it all started with an incredibly insensitive non PC racial slur followed by a plethora of comments telling the original poster why they were wrong. Most just pointed out that the original public property defacer was in fact racist and that she(I'm assuming it was a she since it was a Ladies's bathroom) should keep opinions to herself or leave the country. What I found most interesting were the comments that went into some detail as to immigration policy and the legal stuff behind it.

After taking this in, a few thoughts came to mind. Were the responders to the vandalism frequent gas station bathroom laureates? and more importantly did they wash they hands before leaving.

Just some thoughts.

Peace love and Dr. Pepper,
Beck