My main reason for being here is to check on the status of the restoration of Wyandot BBQ #2, which had a fire in December. I learned that everything they have had to order for the restaurant has been back ordered and they still have no idea when it will reopen.

They serve breakfast from 7-11AM.

The lunch menu is quite short (6 "meals" & 2 salads) and the only hamburger they offer is a single or double cheeseburger. We got a single with cheddar and a double with Swiss cheese. The patties are thick and while cooked well done are juicy and tender. The chef wouldn't tell us her secrets, but I could detect that Worcestershire sauce had been used in the preparation.

The onion rings and waffle fries were made from frozen, but were both quite good. The prices are reasonable.

I need to visit here a couple more times, but Snackle Box will probably be going on my Kansas Best Burgers list. 

Single & double burgers

Sam's has an area for dining in, but really isn't set up for it. The tables are tiny, everything is served Styrofoam carry out containers, the only tableware is the flimsiest of plastic and the only napkins are the tiny square ones sometimes used as coasters. Only bottled drinks were available (including water). They could not provide a glass of ice.

We had crab Rangoon, spicy tuna boat, hot teriyaki chicken wings, French fries and chicken & shrimp hibachi combination. Every dish came out one at a time.

The prices were reasonable. The food was OK, but nothing to bring me back.

chicken & shrimp hibachi

I arrived about noon and the temperature was in the mid 90s, but there was still a long line of people, perhaps because of the news that they are wanting to sell. 

After taking a few photos, I decided that I didn't enjoy their product to stand for a half hour in the hot sun, so I decided to try The Restaurant KC, in the strip center behind. This is just the latest restaurant in this location. It was Suzie Q's and had great pork tenderloins until closing in October 2017. Shortly thereafter it was Heather Beez.

The current restaurant looks unchanged and dated. The menu is much shorter and is mostly breakfast items. The lunch menu is limited to burger, cheese steak, BLTs. turkey & bacon melt, hot ham & cheese, grilled cheese sandwich, tenderloin and chicken strips. I didn't think to ask if the tenderloin is hand breaded.

I settled on the turkey & bacon melt plus fresh cut fries. The sandwich was large and served on good toasted bread. There was little cheese and it could use a dressing or mayonnaise. The fries tasted good, but were severely under cooked. 

I asked if their brownies were house made and was told yes. It was extremely chocolatey, though dry and mostly hard. It was so good that I ate it all anyway and even a small bite filled my mouth with a rich chocolate flavor.

Emergency vehicles arrived at Jones BBQ in the parking lot during my meal and a child who went and checked, said that someone had passed out in the heat.

We enjoyed pork ribs, smoked chicken, fries, baked beans, cheesy corn, mac & cheese and hot potato salad. The ribs are good and the chicken is good, as long as you don't want white meat. They only smoke leg quarters.

Neither the mac & cheese or cheesy corn are anything special, but the beans & fries were good. The hot potato salad was even better than I remembered, the standout of the meal. There are three sauces. I like the hottest (Mad Mother-in-Law) the best. It was not as hot as I remembered.

The service was great. I liked the server writing down a name to go with each dish and serving them without having to ask who gets what.

Pork Ribs

This location gets poorer reviews and I am sorry to say that I agree. The sausage and fresh cut fries were similar to the other location and fine, but the dining room felt dirty and the floor was sticky. Although there was an occasional stream of vehicles picking up at the drive through, I was the only person dining in. 

I will not be back.

Sausage & fries

The cook placed a frozen boneless chicken breast on the grill, covering it with a lid so it would good faster and I think just seasoning it with black pepper and garlic powder. However it was seasoned, it was cooked just right and was enjoyable. There isn't a lot to do with tater tots, but these were done right, crispy on the outside and somewhat tender on the inside.

Now I need to try the breakfasts.

Grilled chicken sandwich

The field around Sunflower General, the Grinter gift shop. are about 4 times higher and look like they may be in bloom by Labor Day.

I drove on through Lawrence on my way toward Topeka, but while driving on Vermont Street, saw that Terrebonne Po' Boys appeared to be empty. I circled the block and learned that they have moved to a new, much larger facility at 845 Massachusetts Street.

While circling the block, a 4 foot tall monument at the corner of 8th and Kentucky caught my eye. It turns out that 807 Kentucky Street was the location of a skating rink, which on February 10, 1899 was the site of the University of Kansas Jayhawk's first home basketball game. The Hawks won 31 to 6. Only about 50 fans saw the game because the gas line had frozen and there was no heat.

I drove the back roads to Berry Hill UPick Farm in Berryton, Kansas. They have done two sunflower plantings this year. It looks like they are 2-3 weeks apart and the first sunflowers are expected in mid August. 

While I was in Topeka, I revisited Topeka Cemetery to photograph the grave of Harold Rudolf Foster. As Hal Foster he created a weekly comic strip based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" which began running in 1929. He drew the strip for 6 years before leaving to start his own weekly strip, "Prince Valiant," which first appeared on February 13, 1937. He continued to work on the comic strip until 1979. Prince Valiant continues through this day and has told one continuous story in over 4,000 Sunday comic strips.

Foster married Helen Wells from Topeka in 1915 and the Fosters lived in Topeka from 1936-1941. Their bodies were returned to be buried in Topeka Cemetery.

Across town, I also stopped at the grave of Carrie Frances Kiene in Mount Hope Cemetery. The grave of 5 year old who died in 1995 has a child statue which is reported to be decorated for the various season of the year. Except for plastic flowers, there were no decorations today.

Lunch was at Korean Garden in Garden City. Kansas. They have limited hours and I hadn't been able to return to this restaurant in 3 years. The dining room is closed and it is carry out only. I had the #5 lunch special - seasoned & fried squid lunch box combo. It came with white rice, a fortune cookie and some banchan side dishes. The sides were less generous than they are when dining in-house, but I still liked the cucumber kim chee.

It wasn't much fun eating by myself in the car, so I just tasted each item and then put the lunch box in the cooler for another day.

I went on to Abilene to have the rest of lunch at Amanda's Bakery & Bistro, which had been recommended to me by a friend. Amanda's fills two storefronts and is a combination of home decor, antiques, old candy and bakery/lunch room. The lunch choices to day were traditional bierock, ham & cheese bierock, or take and bake pizza. The cashier explained that the baking is done at the end of the week and there wasn't much baked goods today.

I decided on one of each bierock and they came out fairly quick. They were almost all dough, with very little filling. I really wanted to like the food, but would have been happier if they were a third of the size with the same amount of filling. The traditional one tasted the better of the two, but it was just too much like eating bread. 

Before leaving town, I photographed several murals and the statue of Dwight Eisenhower as a boy in Little Ike Park.

Moving on to McPherson, Kansas, it has been time for a revisit to the McPherson Museum. 15 years ago, the McPherson Museum occupied an attractive 1920 Tudor Revival home, but in 2013 they built a large modern museum. The new structure had taken the available funds and it took several years for some of the new displays to be built. 

They have had time and the museum is very nice today. My favorite things include the Mid Kansas Model Railroaders layout. Mid Kansas Model Railroaders layout, G. O. Swanson's animated miniature carnival rides, the prehistoric animal fossils and the history of basketball in McPherson, including the 1936 the McPherson Globe Refiners Basketball Team, which formed the core of the US Olympic basketball team that represented the United States in Berlin and won the gold medal. 

Continuing to Hutchinson, I stopped at the Cosmosphere International SciEd Center and Space Museum. The museum closes at 5 PM these days and it was too late to have time to go through the museum, but I did confirm and photograph the portions of the Center which are free to visit, including Liberty Bell 7, replica Apollo lunar lander, a flown SR-71 Blackbird, a restored Mission Control console, exhibits about each of the planets, a cutaway Saturn H-1 engine, gift shop, and more. This free space alone is a major space museum!

With most Hutchinson attractions closed for the day, I spent the next hour photographing some of the murals in Hutchinson. While I was driving across town, I happened to see a small cemetery and a sign which said "Reformatory Cemetery." It took a little effort to find a place which wasn't marked no parking, but I found a spot and walked over to check out this interesting little cemetery.

There were 46 crosses and about 24 other markers. (I was interrupted before I could locate all of them) Many are badly eroded and it appears that less than 10 have names. A few others have just a number. Some of the ones with names are almost completely covered with soil and grass. While I was trying to make a record of every marker and determine if there were faded markings on other stones, a van pulled up and two uniform men told me that I had to leave. That this was state property which is not open to the public. I politely pointed out that although many places up the street said no admittance, there were no signs on the cemetery, but they demanded that I leave.

Too bad, this is a poignant little cemetery which could use some recognition.

I had supper at the Airport Steakhouse & Bar in the small terminal at the Hutchinson Airport. The long running steak house changed hands in February, but appears much the same so far. I was seated by the window but saw only one plane take off and no landings during my meal.

The didn't appear to be short staffed, but my server was quite slow. I had the 14 ounce rib eye, which came with the choice of two sides for $31. The steak, house cut fires and onion rings all tasted great. They were also very salty. The rib eye was seasoned with black pepper, garlic and a lot of salt. The onion rings were cold, but still tasted well enough that I finished them.

My last stop of the day was the prairie dog colony in the field at the south side of Home Depot. I've known that there was a prairie dog colony in Hutchinson for several years, but the directions I had previously were not correct. This is actually easy to find. It is a great place to sit in your vehicle and watch the black-tailed prairie dogs play. It is the most prairie dogs which I have found in one place and they were not very concerned about people.

I spent the night at Comfort Suites, nearby. Not terrible, but the room was musty and the carpet was not very clean. Breakfast was adequate the next morning.

807 Kentucky St.
 
 

Hal Foster grave
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

squid lunch box
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Swanson's carnival rides
 

Liberty Bell 7
 
 
 
 
 

Reformatory Cemetery
 
 
 

Airport Steakhouse
 
 
 

Prairie Dogs

I drove to the State Fair Grounds to photograph the grand stands, some monuments and a mural. The sign on the Lair White House said it houses a State Fair Museum and the sign on the door said it opens at 10 AM, so I returned about 10:15. It was still locked up, so I called the State Fair Office and was told that the museum is only open during the fair.

There was still time to kill before R-B Drive In opened at 10:45 and I visited Toy Depot, which had an ad in the Hutchinson Travel Guide, which said they open at 10. It was closed as well.

There were already customers inside when I pulled up at R-B a little after 10:30. R-B is Kansas' oldest drive-in and opened in 1948. A quarter pound cheeseburger, hand cut fries and chili cheese dog were $10 including tax. I had ordered the chili dog without cheese, but it was still good.

The owner, Kirk Johnson, saw me taking photos of the food and chatted for a while. He said that they added DoorDash last year and it has been a big success for them. There are 300 DoorDash drivers in the community and the drivers are waiting for the food to take it as soon as it is ready.

In Newton, I toured the Carriage Factory Art Gallery. Between construction on the front of the building and a large delivery taking place during my visit, it was still nice. I was impressed by the work of Albert H. Krehbiel, an American impressionist who grew up working in the family carriage factory. I would love to see more of his art. I also liked the small amount of information about the factory and it would be nice if that could be expanded. The gallery is operated as a nonprofit and features the art of nearly 50 regional artists.

Before leaving Newton, I photographed a railroad bridge over Sand Creek, then followed the river upstream though town. It is quite beautiful.

With extra time on my hands, I stopped to take some new photos of the Clements Stone Arch Bridge. Although I have returned 2 or 3 times over the years, the photos currently on my page devoted to the 1888 double arch stone bridge were all taken in 2006. After walking a ways downstream to get different angles, I saw two white-tailed deer near the south end of the bridge.

A second stop was made at the Cottonwood River Dam and Bridge at Cottonwood Falls. An enormous log jam has built up next to the old bridge below the dam. 

The Millstream Motel next to the dam has never reopened after closing "temporarily" during Covid in 2020.

double & chili cheese dog

"Edge of the Woods" by Albert H. Krehbiel
 
 
 
 
 
 

Log jam