Kansas

After spending the entire summer in Oklahoma, it was time for a road trip. Shelby and I decided to choose destinations that were affordable, so we took advantage of Jordan and Patrick's summer housing at William Jewell. From there, we were able to cross three more states off our lists while having a great time with some best friends. The first day trip was to Wichita, KS, which is conveniently located on the way to Liberty, MO where we stayed for the next week.

Lucky for us, Jordan's friend Whitney lives in Wichita. She acted as our generous guide for the day. Let me just say that after multiple drives through and around Kansas, I'm really grateful that we had a connection and got to experience what seems to be the coolest, most interesting part. We spent the majority of our time in Old Town, which is basically a square of cool shops and restaurants and entertainment.

Lunch was at Caffe Moderne, where we had delicious paninis. I'm going to describe my sandwich, because it's important that this gets documented in history. It was called The Josephine and consisted of smoked turkey, gorgonzola, toasted walnuts, and honey-thyme mayo. It was so good. After this, we did some light shopping. I spotted what looked like a mangled body on a bench, so I stopped to check it out. Turns out, someone left a lifesize doll here with a sign in hopes that it would find a good home. I had Whitney snap a picture of the four of us with it. If only we had enough room in the already stuffed car...

We visited a free city art museum that had some pretty cool stuff. I especially enjoyed the oil paintings and photographs. Whitney then took us to Mead's Corner Coffeehouse, which was quite good. Shelby enjoyed some gelato, and I found that they make a mean iced latte. We hung out for a while, and then decided to head over to an antique mall. They had neat old books and other ancient things, but what they didn't have was air conditioning. Fans blowing lukewarm air can only satisfy me for so long. Needless to say, I was glad to get back to Whitney's loft.

Her house looked like it was straight out of a catalog. It was beautiful and modern and perfect. The craziest part was probably that her parents' bed is on a glass floor which just kind of hangs out over the kitchen. That description leaves quite a bit to be imagined, but I'd like to leave it that way. Just trust that it was really awesome. We watched the Olympics and generally just hung around until we got hungry enough for dinner.

For our last stop in Wichita, the five of us decided on Knolla's pizza. What should have been a simple fifteen minute drive to our location turned into about thirty because we chose the restaurant next door to a Chick-fil-A on the day that conservatives flocked there for chicken sandwiches to show their support or something. I've never. It was worse than Black Friday. Finally, we got to Knolla's and enjoyed some awesome pizza. After that, Patrick drove us the last three hours to Jewell.

states: 02/50

Bryce :)