We followed up with gelato at Cocoa Dolce Artisan Chocolate, a couple of miles away. It was a much more comfortable place to continue to catch up with our friends and with four people, we were able to sample a nice selection. The triple dark chocolate gelato was very good. The candies were beautiful, but tasted less impressive. 

This is Cocoa Dolce's flagship store. A second location is opening in Overland Park, Kansas, later this month.

Cocoa Dolce Artisan Chocolate

Wichita has lot of great places for burgers and we had lunch at my favorite, a tiny dive named Bomber Burger. It is a 63 year old bar with about 7 stools and 3 tiny tables. The owner is usually the only employee, working the bar while cooking and keeping it open only from 10AM-5PM. The 3/4 pound burgers are sprinkled with a little garlic powder and the toppings & buns are high quality. I had warned Linda that the owner has an attitude, but she pointed out that he was still polite.

We toured Botanica (the Wichita Gardens) and the Great Plains Nature Center, which Linda had never been to before. There were several new features, such as the Downing Children's Garden which includes a farm with raised beds & a working water pump, a giant tree & tree house, and a musical maze.

The new model railway garden appears to be a big hit.

We visited a second chocolate shop, Cero's Candies, which was started by Pete Cero in 1885, and was still
operated by the Cero family until 1999. It has since changed hands twice and recently moved to a new location which I hadn't been to before. While this shop isn't as sophisticated as the one we visited the night before and the selection of candies was much smaller, we both enjoyed them more.

It was a good thing we had a cooler along. We stumbled across a satellite location of Yoder Meats, where we bought some of their house made sausage and buffalo jerky. A large trailer mounted smoker was operating in front of the store and we were told that they bring it to this location once a month.

The Seafood Shop, right next door,  us a fresh fish market where we picked up some house made smoked fish spreads.

I had just recently learned of the Wichita Center For the Arts, which is about both performing and visual arts. We
were there to tour the galleries. They are large, but mostly open space and the largest area is used for temporary exhibits such as the current one on pastels. We were more interested in the more intimate galleries which displayed a small sampling of the permanent collection.

A trolley with a wedding party pulled up to take pictures on the bridge leading to the Center, as we were leaving.

The Great Plains Nature Center was mostly unchanged since my first visit in 2006. Our favorite part was the Bob Gress Wildlife Observatory which looks out onto the wetlands of Chisholm Creek Park.  The area immediately outside the windows is landscaped with a recirculating stream, bird feeders and plants attractive to butterflies and birds. A mallard duck family was exploring the stream.

Having a "Koch" Habitat Hall seems like a but of a role reversal.

Driving north from Wichita, we stopped for supper in Newton and I had a long overdue return to the Mennonite Bakery, The Breadbasket, which has a German buffet on Friday and Saturday evenings. I really need to get back here more often!

I have never liked borscht, but their borscht was made with cabbage and no beets. It was one of the best soups which I have ever had.

The sausage was great, both on its own or with a little horseradish and sweet mustard. I was being bad and had two desserts. I first had cherry moos (creamy cherry soup) at the Mennonite Relief sale last year, and enjoyed it again. My favorite was bohne berroggi. I wouldn't have tried it from the description, but it looked so good. It was a warm pastry with sweet pinto bean paste inside and topped with a wonderful sweet, creamy sauce.

As we continued north to spend the the night in Junction City, we saw a sign about an arboretum as were passing Hesston and pulled off to discover the 13 acre Dyck Arboretum which was started in 1981. The visitor's center has very limited hours, but the grounds are available all the time.

The arboretum is part of Hesston College.

Bomber Burger 

Botanica

Cero's Candies 

Yoder Meats

Wichita Center For the Arts 

Great Plains Nature Center

The Breadbasket
 
 
 

Dyck Arboretum

The following 5 hours were spent visiting booths, shopping, eating and touring the museum the Festival surrounded. We caught up on changes at places we have already visited and picked up leads on new places. Some places have changed a lot and we learned that it is time to return to Galena and see the changes at Four Women on the Route, which is now called Cars on the Route.

We were hot and feeling a little worn out by then, and headed home, with just brief stops to photograph the newly restored State Capitol dome in Topeka and a couple of art environments. The first of those was a little known "fire hydrant garden" in Topeka, where a large yard is lined with fire hydrants of all colors, shapes and sizes. Perhaps 50 or 60 of them. 

The final stop was at Nick Schmiedler's folk art environment in his family's yard in Lawrence which has made some changes since I photographed it before. Actually, I'm not sure that changes would be that obvious to the casual visitor, but I was still happy to update the info.

Fire hydrant garden

Schmiedler's folk art

Their own web site still lists the old pricing, which was about 50 cents cheaper.

We were a little slow getting away in the morning and were among the last to arrive at Maxwell Wildlife Refuge at 7:30 for the Babies and Wildflowers Photographers Tour. There are nearly 300 wild American Bison in the refuge and the fund raising event spread about 30 photographers across three trams and took into into the center of a herd of over 100 of them. The herd included about 30 calves which had been born in the past few weeks. Many of them were within a few feet.

I was hoping for elk photography opportunities, but they will not drop their young for a few more weeks and we saw only one elk at a distance.

Returning to McPherson, we photographed the new facility housing the McPherson Museum and Arts Foundation. They have built a nice brand new facility, but still need another $100,000 for new exhibits. There wasn't much to see at this point and I need to consider how to update their review to say nice things, while encouraging visitors to put off their visits until there is more to see.

We had lunch at the Trail Days Cafe and Museum in Council Grove on the Santa Fe Trail. It had been nearly 3 years since we visited this cool combination of museum complex and mom & pop restaurant. Actually, it is currently just a pop restaurant. Mom is recovering from lung cancer. The menu includes American Indian, Old World, Early American, and 20th Century foods that are made from scratch. Linda had roast elk and I had Toad in the Hole (a traditional British dish of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter).

We went on to Topeka, to buy specialty foods at Rees Fruit Farm for an upcoming promotion.

We also had a snack so I could update the review of Bobo's Drive-In. It is a 66 year old restaurant which has been on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. In addition to finally trying the Spanish burger and retrying the apple pie, we learned that the prices have gone up since my last visit a few months ago.

In a change of pace we went to Sk8away, to watch Roller Derby. The Capital City Crushers soundly defeated the Salina Sirens. An old family friend was one was one of the referees.

We had a late supper at Royal Buffet, a Chinese buffet, before heading home. In January it opened in the space which had housed another large buffet. It is the fourth location for this small chain, which has another location in Wichita and two in Nebraska. I felt it was slightly improved over the previous restaurant, but not really a place I would single out for visitors to try.

We took them to Rosedale Barbeque in Kansas City, Kansas, which was founded in 1934. I enjoyed the ribs and was able to update the menu for the Rosedale listing on this site.

Visiting the Great Hall is free, but there isn't very much there so far. There is a fee to view rotating temporary exhibits. They need to do a better job of selling those exhibits.

After a lunch at Hillsdale Bank BBQ, where we sampled a couple of dishes we hadn't had before, we stopped at KC Watersports, where several people were water skiing on Cable Lake. An automated ski tow pulls skiers around the small lake with no need for a boat.

Ski jumping