I gave out books for trick or treat again, which was a big hit. The little girl who lives across the corridor from me told me how much she liked the copy of Charlotte's Web she got last year. This year, she took one of the Anne of Green Gables books. Since I get the books essentially free (either actually free or using trade credit at the used book stores) it's no hassle and well worth doing. I did give out candy as well and succumbed to leftover chocolate, alas. Not even good quality chocolate, but I'm not going to waste Cote d'Or on children.
The work week was mildly hellish with a couple of particularly pointless meetings. Wednesday morning was particularly irritating as I spent the entire time during a two hour session trying to figure out what the actual purpose of the meeting was. I never did find out, either. All in all, I did a bunch of stuff, but none of it felt particularly productive.
As for the weekend, I advanced one of my life list items a bit by doing a Volksmarch in Topeka, Kansas. I flew into Kansas City and rented a car. Given the late night arrival time, I was smart enough to stay at a hotel near the airport, but it took me some effort actually finding the hotel since it had a sign that was not particularly visible from the road. Hint: lighting can be useful. In the morning I drove west and had no real difficulty getting to the starting point for the walk.
The walk covered most of the attractions of central Topeka. One stretch of a residential neighborhood was annoying, due to a lot of yappy dogs, but most of the walk was enjoyable. I did take some time to wander a bit around Old Prairie Town in Ward-Meade Park. The highlights of the walk included Potwin Place (a neighborhood of Victorian homes - particularly lovely this time of year with fall foliage) and Topeka High School, which may be the most architecturally interesting high school building I've ever seen, with a tower designed to look like the one at Magdalen College at Oxford. The walk also included the State Capitol, which has some interesting murals inside, including several historical subjects. It's always interesting to see who gets honored at Capitol buildings and this one featured four statues of famous Kansans. Two were publishers who I admit not having heard of, but the other two were Dwight D. Eisenhower and Amelia Earhart.
The Brown v. Board of Education site was not on the walk route, but I drove over there after I finished. The National Park Service has done their usual excellent job on this. There's a film about the history of segregation and the civil rights movement, divided into five 5-minute segments. Then there are two rooms of exhibits - one on events leading up to the Supreme Court decision desegregating schools and one on the later civil rights movement. Very informative and well done. There was also a special exhibit about Rosa Parks, by the way.
I left Topeka and drove west to Highway 99, then north to Waumego to go to the Oz Museum. This is a private collection of Oz memorabilia and is worth an hour or so. There's interesting video footage, including early silent film versions of The Wizard of Oz. Other exhbits include original illustrations, costumes from the movie, Oz books in various languages, Oz related toys, etc.. There's also a large gift shop, but it lacked the one thing I would really have liked, namely a plush winged monkey. (Yes, I am weird and twisted.)
More or less next door to the Museum, there's a restaurant called Toto's Tacoz. Mexican food in Kansas is an iffy thing, but I hadn't had lunch yet and it was actually not bad. Since it was also on the same block, I looked in at the restored Columbian Theatre, which is reasonably grand. One tends to forget about the opera houses and ornate theatres of rural America. Some of them were turned into movie palaces, but it's only quite recently that there's been much interest in restoring them and using them as cultural centers again.
I continued westwards to Junction City for the night. I'd made a hotel reservation based on a search for things near Manhattan, KS, and that was rather a bad choice. The hotel itself (a Courtyard by Marriott) was fine, but Junction City is just not much of a place. I ended up eating a mediocre supper at a Cracker Barrel (a chain I dislike, but the other choices available were Burger King and Taco Bell). My mood wasn't helped by having the car rear-ended at a stop sign on the way there. There was no damage to either car, but the guy wasn't even apologetic about hitting me. To add even more to the evening, the fire alarm at the hotel went off. It turned out to be a kid pulling it, not an actual fire, but it was still upsetting.
The day today was somewhat better. I drove to downtown Junction City and read the historical signs there - all three of them. Actually, the downtown area has a lot of reasonably well-preserved 19th century architecture. It's still not much of a place. Then I drove back to Manhattan, which is not particularly impressive either. However, the road going back to the Interstate features a scenic overlook, with viewing of a tallgrass prairie reserve and a short paved path. It made a pleasant and interesting stop.
Going further east, I went back to Topeka and to the zoo there. I suppose it's decent for a small city, and it did have the requisite number of predators. The lions were lying around languidly and the leopards were invisible, but one tiger was out pacing about. The best exhibit was the brown bears. There are also reasonable primate exhibits (gorilla, orangutang) and a nice waterfowl area. The rain forest exhibit should be good, but it smelled too unpleasant for me to enjoy it. All in all, it's worth about an hour.
Then I did some more random country driving and made my way back to Kansas City. I returned the car and flew home and endured metro delays that made me miss watching Desparate Housewives. All in all, it was a reasonable trip, but not a very exciting one. I'm looking forward now to three consecutive weekends at home.
Copyright 2005 Miriam H. Nadel