Exploring Kansas

Sunnyland Bed and Breakfast, Garden City KS. A beautiful, restful retreat in an old Victorian home. This B&B sits along a quiet, tree-lined street and has plenty of cute rooms, warm hospitality, and hot coffee. The price was very fair. I will definitely be back.  

I recently returned from a lovely weekend retreat of exploration, writing, and running. As is usually the case, I met some wonderful and unforgettable people along the way. 

I had planned on running the Red Thread Movement 5K in Ulysses, KS Saturday morning, and then BAH suggested making it a weekend writer's retreat! I was so excited to finally get to meet this author because his daughter was the race director. In turn, I ended up meeting the entire group involved with planning this race as well as many others who were there running or donating time and resources in one way or another. As a result, I ended up hanging out in Ulysses for half of the day and having a great time just chatting away with everyone! There was such a genuinely good energy in this group - you could just feel it. They ended up raising a lot of money for Eternal Threads to help girls rescued from sex trafficking. Hopefully this race will be an annual event. Aside from raising money and awareness for a deeply important cause (every penny went to Eternal Threads because the entire event was purely run on volunteer time and local donations), the race itself was small, scenic, and flat. No runner can turn that down after countless races of people swarming so thickly they are practically crawling all over you at the start line :)

Ecclesiastes room at Sunnyland B&B. It is very relaxing, cool, and quiet. My room had balcony access, but I chose to stay inside where it was air-conditioned. I think it was 104-108 degrees outside when I snapped these photos!  

This was my first stay at a B&B. Aside from the fact that everything smelled good (I have an extremely high-functioning olfactory system worthy of an entire, separate blog. It is both a blessing and a curse and it makes me very judgmental about smells and food and really good at wine tasting and telling if milk is bad or if there is an animal in danger. Just kidding about that last part), I loved the personal touch. It was sweet that on both mornings, although I didn't ask for it, as soon as they heard me up and stirring, there would be a tiny, quick knock on my door and outside would be a big pot of coffee with cream and sugar and these fruit slushy things they make, which are initially weird for breakfast but so yummy! Sunday morning I had breakfast with the other guests, which was also fun.

Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands complex (except for the sunflower photo - that was just some random person's driveway).

The drive from Fort Leavenworth to Garden City is breath-taking, and there is so much to see, from the tall-grass prairie habitat, to the Flinthills, to the prairie dunes, to the wetlands. Yes, wetlands! It took me 6.5 hours to drive to Garden City, and then another hour from Garden City to Ulysses. Not bad at all! Very well worth it.

Oz Museum in Wapego, KS, just outside of Topeka.

One more thing, if you make this drive. When you see the signs for the Oz Museum in Wapego, follow them! It is 9 miles off of the freeway, and from the outside, it looks like nothing. Go in! I have never seen such an amazing exhibit dedicated to L. Frank Baum - Amazing man and author of so many wonderful stories. He was a pioneer of the time and didn't even write any of this stories down until he was an old man. He sold oil or something for a living. His wife got on his case about getting these things written down before he died, and thankfully, he listened.

“If we walk far enough," says Dorothy, "we shall sometime come to someplace.” 

- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz