Fan's offers several complete lunch specials for $5.99. I had the Szehuan chicken with egg roll and hot and sour soup. The soup was surprisingly bland. They only serve only one style of dumplings and they were fairly good with a thick, tasty pasta covering a a sweet meat filling. 6 small dumplings were $4.50.

The best item we tried was the chicken kabobs. Four good sized kabobs were only $3.95. THey were heavily seasoned, but not too hot, and quite tender.

The side dishes that came with the sausage were both very good. I'm not a big fan of mashed potatoes without gravy, but these mashed potatoes were great. Linda never likes cooked cabbage, but she did enjoy the sweet red cabbage.

I selected one of the most expensive dishes on the menu, the $14.99 mojarra al mojo de jo, which was a whole fish covered with a great garlic sauce. Though I reeked of garlic for the rest of the day, I loved it.

The meal came with chips and salsa. The chips were warm and thick (made with coarse ground corn) and served with two salsas - red and green. The green salsa had more flavor and heat, but both were good.

I spent the weekend at ConQuesT 42, a science fiction convention in Kansas City, Missouri. I participated on panels related to social networking and Star Trek fandom. Also took many photographs and posted 15 pages of photos from ConQuesT on the MidAmerican Fan Photo Archive.

The fried intestine was ovals meat with a thin layer of white meat and a crispy casing. It came with a sweet sauce that accented the flavor of the fairly bland meat.

For supper, Linda joined me in trying the fairly new KC Sports Grill in Lenexa.  When we pulled in, the parking lot was completely full, but the hostess said that a table would be available in 15-20 minutes. We decided to wait, which was a mistake. It took about 35 minutes to get a table and when we were seated, the server said that the kitchen was backed up and the food would be slow.

Over 30 minutes after we placed our order, the server returned to say that they were out of one of the items we had ordered and ask for an alternative. The food ended up taking another 30 minutes.

We sampled a grilled chicken & strawberry salad, provolone wedges, wings, potato skins, onion rings and a bacon, mushroom & swiss burger. The food was fine, but nothing special. The best item was the chicken wings, which might have been very good if they had been a bit warmer.

KC Sports Grill

Also greatly expanded the section of on my northern Michigan sister site devoted to the Mackinac Bridge 50th Anniversary Celebration.

We began with the $5.88 hot & spicy beef tendon appetizer. The generous serving of thin slices of meat didn't have a great deal of flavor. The taste it did have, reminded me of pork rinds.

For main dishes, we had salt & pepper pork chop, pork chop Peking Style, salt & pepper squid and sautéed chicken with Chinese vegetables. The two pork chop dishes were quite generous, but the chicken dish was a whole chicken with a ginger sauce on the side.

The meats were cut into small pieces and almost every piece had some bone.

The salt & pepper squid was was the most familiar dish. Lightly coated in sea salt and pepper seasoned flour and then quickly fried. It was very good, but my favorite dish was the salt & pepper pork chop. The deep fried pork chop pieces were flavored with soy and very different from the salt & pepper squid.

Yes we are very proud!

The pulled pork, which was also slightly sweet, was my favorite meat. The coleslaw and fries were both better than average, but the beans were mushy with large chunks of rather tough meat.

Add a new review of the Cabin where the poem that was turned into the song, Home on the Range was penned.

Home on the Range Cabin

Service was still good, but they are still having a problem accidentally serving people Diet Dr. Pepper instead of Diet Coke. The servers get confused by the DP label on the soda dispenser.

Updated and expanded the review of the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kansas with photos taken last weekend.

Supper was at Supper was at Shogun Sushi and Japanese Steakhouse in Lenexa, Kansas. The food and service were typical of Kansas City area Japanese Steakhouses, though Shogun is a bit less expensive than most. The servings were very large and we took quite a bit of meat home with us.

I am not a big sweet potato fries fan, but these were some of the best that I have ever had. They were tender inside, but crispy and perfectly accented with sea salt. The service was much better this time. There was one error, when I was first brought Diet Dr. Pepper instead of Diet Coke, but the rest of the service was perfect.

Added a new review of of the Quindaro & Western University Ruins in Kansas City, Kansas.

Breakfast and lunch were included with the seminar, so my only meal at a restaurant was supper at Timberline Steaks & Grille in the Denver Airport. When I ordered Rocky Mountain oysters and buffalo rib eye, the server asked if I knew what mountain oysters were:-0

The oysters had a nice presentation, were fairly good and the serving was very generous. The rib eye had a poor presentation, was quite tough and came with fries that had sat too long. But the service was good, they have free wifi and I took my soda to an easy chair next to fireplace to use the internet while I waited for my plane. Not a bad experience on balance.

Timberline Steaks & Grille

The meeting had just started when the Executive Director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, Marci Penner, noticed my bride sitting next to me. It was Linda's first Sampler Festival and Marci introduced Linda and and Karen, the new wife of Kansas photographer and blogger, Larry Hornbaker.

The brief meeting included updates on upcoming Explorer activities and a presentation about next year's Sampler Festival which will be held in Liberal, Kansas. The meeting ended at 9AM and we had time to visit the Kansas Sampler tent to pick up our 2011 pins and purchase some Explorers' apparel before the Festival opened at 10 AM. 

The Festival included food, crafts and entertainment, but I was mainly there to visit the booths devoted to over 150 Kansas communities. I took along a tote bag and plastic bags, putting the brochures from each region of the state into a different bag. We encountered several people who I recognized from having visited their attractions, including Erika Nelson from Lucas, Jack Crispin from Lincoln and the curator of the John Brown Museum is Osawatomie.

There were many food vendors at the Festival, but I haven't had many opportunities to dine in the Leavenworth area recently, so we went to lunch at Luigi's Italian Restaurant. Luigi's came highly recommended by WenDee LaPlant and others, and we were not disappointed.

The restaurant looked small at first, but we were were lead up a flight of steps to a second, larger, packed dining room. We started with a $.95 sliced sausage appetizer. It was a large serving of sausage which has been sautéed in olive oil, garlic, basil, marinara sauce & sherry. It was very garlicky and very good.

Linda selected the $6.95 manicotti. The pasta stuffed with ricotta cheese and topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella was as good a manicotti as I have ever had.

I had the second most expensive dish on Luigi's menu, the $19.95 lamb chops. The 6 grilled chops had even more garlic than the sausage and were served with mashed potatoes which had been lightly covered with melted cheese.

The meal also came with some very good toasted bread with olive oil and spices for dipping. This was a great meal!

We drove through Leavenworth and on to Atchison to photograph a small waterfall, next to the Santa Fe Depot which doubles as a museum and home to the Atchison Chamber of Commerce. There are actually three, very small falls. Two of them are under Kansas Highway 7. The narrow creek was named named 4th of July 1804 Creek by Captain William Clark when Lewis & Clark paused near the creek on that date.

A covered pedestrian bridge crosses the creek just below the falls in the photo at the right.

We drove across Atchison to the waterfront to photograph the Atchison Riverfront Park with its Lewis & Clark Pavilion, Veteran's Memorial and a small section of the aft deckhouse superstructure of the battleship U.S.S. Arizona which sank during the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.

Continuing north, we investigated another small waterfall, but it had no water at this time.

Then back a mile or so south and west to Independence Creek Historic Site. Independence Creek was the second Missouri River tributary visited by Lewis and Clark and named on the 4th of July 1804 Creek.

The historic site has a recreated Kanza Lodge which is periodically open to the public and can be viewed through a gate at other times. It is also a trail head which is connected to Atchison Riverfront Park by a 10 mile hiking and bicycling trail.

Back in Atchison, we stopped at Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum. I previously visited the museum before starting this web site and this was an opportunity take photographs of the interior of Amelia Earhart's birthplace. One of the new displays has costumes which we worn by Hilary Swank in the movie, Amelia.

The final stop of the trip was at Angel Falls in Lansing. There was very little water falling on the tiny falls I don't think it will be finding its way on to the Kansas Waterfalls Page.

Kansas Explorers' Meeting
 
 
 
 

Luigi's Italian Restaurant
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4th of July 1804 Falls

Lewis & Clark Pavilion in Riverfront Park
 

Kanza Lodge
 

Costumes from the movie, Amelia

While we were in Quindaro, we drove by the bluff overlooking the ruins and discovered that a new overlook pavilion and plaques have been erected. Quindaro was founded in 1856 as a port of entry for free soil immigrants into Kansas. During its brief existence, it was an important station on the Underground Railroad.

We stayed in Kansas City, Kansas and had lunch at Quick's Seventh Street Bar-B-Q. Though Seventh Street is also owned by descendants of Earl Quick, it shouldn't be confused with Quick's Bar-B-Q, a few miles away.

We tried a wide range of items (ribs, sausage, pulled pork, turkey, onion rings, French fries, baked beans & coleslaw), but none of the dishes stood out as something special. My favorites were the onion rings and turkey, but I wouldn't hurry back.

After lunch, we walked across the street to Bichelmeyer Meats to stock up on their house made bacon and several sausages: cheese bratwurst, old world Polish sausage, Italian sausage and BBQ sausage. We haven't had a chance to try them yet.

We returned to Kansas City with our girls in the evening, to have supper at Woodyard BBQ. Woodyard has received a fair amount of attention in the press, but has never been one of my favorite spots.

The meats were better tonight than they have ever been before. In the past, the meats have been so smoky that my mouth would still be smoky hours later.

I do wish Woodyard offered French fries or onion rings. To me, they are a key part of a BBQ meal. The ribs and hot chicken legs were my favorite dishes tonight, though the girls did not care for the chicken.

It was a warm, pretty evening and dining on the patio was made even more pleasant by a man singing and playing guitar. He said the Woodyard now has music on Thursday through Saturday evenings.

Bichelmeyer Meats

Woodyard BBQ

Added a new page devoted to Veterans Memorial Park in Olathe, Kansas.

We had lunch at an Olathe, Kansas restaurant which opened just 3 days earlier - 119th Street Diner. The building is just a few years old, but this is the third restaurant in this location. The last one was Domo, a sushi restaurant which lasted only 6 months.

We started with the roasted shrimp cocktail. The roasted cold shrimp tasted pretty good, but $8.95 seemed like a lot for 5 medium sized shrimp.

We were happier with the other food. My $8.95 spinach salad was good, but Linda's $9.95 smoked salmon BLT was spectacular. The bacon and salmon complimented each other and went well on a toasted bun that wouldn't have worked with a regular BLT.

Our server was nice but made many new restaurant mistakes. I look forward to trying 119th again in a few weeks and seeing how they are coming along.

119th Street Diner

The fries were fresh cut. They weren't bad, but they would have been better if they were crisper. But the cheese sandwich was a real treat. The Shack offers a $3 regular grilled cheese sandwich, but I ordered the $4 Bobby C's Grilled Cheese sandwich.

Wow, the Bobby C's includes grilled onions, grilled jalapenos, and two slices of tomato on Texas toast, grilled on the flat-top grill. This was a wonderful sandwich. 

In the evening, I made a review of the Shack on Santa Fe.

It has been two years since my last meal at Café Tempo. The Café is no longer open on Saturdays and has slightly reduced the scope of the menu, but the food is still very good. They no longer offer the wonderful grilled flank steak salad which I loved, but the cobb salad was both attractive and made with the very best ingredients.

Added a new page devoted to the Creamery Bridge and Osawatomie Dam in Osawatomie, Kansas.

Neither the chili dog or double bacon cheese burger were anything special. The chili had lots of beans. The onion rings were average, machine made frozen rings. The best thing at Sam's is the sundaes and malts.

While I was waiting for the food, I picked up a copy of today's Johnson's County Gazette and found that it had a Hidden Mystery Lost Olathe Location Contest. By coincidence, it was a small structure adjacent to Cedar Creek Falls which I photographed just Friday. It is on the left side of the photo at the top of this page. I called the Gazette right away and won a free sandwich at Celebrity's Sidewalk Cafe.

For supper, Linda & Jesi joined me at Mezzaluna Italian Restaurant in Shawnee, Kansas. Mezzaluna serves classic Northern Italian dishes in a rather over decorated dining room.

Dishes sampled included minestrone soup, spaghetti, chicken spiedini, bisteka di Vittelo con insalata "Gorgonzola" - organic mixed green salad with grilled steak, Gorgonzola cheese, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. All of the dishes were good, if not outstanding, and portions were fairly good sized. The meals ranged from $12-19.

Mezzaluna Italian Restaurant

The top one percent of Kansas High School Seniors came from across the state at the invitation of Governor Sam Brownback. There were several brief speeches followed by a photo opportunity with Governor Brownback with each senior. My step daughter was one of the students recognized. Yes, I am proud of her!

2011 was the 28th annual Governor's Scholars Awards program. 

Supper was at a brand new restaurant in Overland Park - Ruby Buffet. This is the second Chinese restaurant at this location across from Oak Park Mall. There weren't very many people dining in the restaurant and the food had been sitting too long to be a treat. Some of the dishes were updated before we finished and they were quite a bit better. The best dishes on this day were beef with mushroom and chicken with jalapenos.

Ruby Buffet