the capital

Golden and I visited Topeka for a short vacation over a long weekend. My impression of the city is it is a good place to visit for three days, but a person would probably have trouble filling a week there. Good thing we weren't there for a week. It was really a good place for us to get away without getting too far away.

We arrived at the Ramada on Thursday night and finalized our plans for the weekend. The view wasn't the greatest from the room because we faced away from the city. I didn't expect much of a view anyway, though, and most everything else about the hotel was good.

The next morning we headed for the capitol building. We entered from the garage underneath the building because this is the visitor entry. We had to go through a literal maze of hallways below the building to get into it. At some points I thought we wandered into some abandoned basement room. I cannot believe much thought went into the design of that entryway.


We started a tour but skipped out on it as an entire elementary class was on the tour. That was for the best, as we saw pretty much everything we wanted to see.


That afternoon after a turkey sandwich lunch at the Sunflower Bakery we went to the Kansas History Museum. The first section of the museum was a display of Kansas in the movies. Apparently the last time Kansas was in real movie was in the 50s. It was a lot of Westerns. The rest of the museum was dedicated either to the history of the formation of the state or artifacts from the times since the state's creation. There was also a train that we could walk through, but only through one of the cars.


On Saturday the weather report called for severe but occasional thunderstorms. Fortunately, we didn't run into any during the day. Our first stop was at the zoo. Golden covered the zoo on her site, so if you can check that out there. Here are some pictures of that, though. I will say that the zoo is rather small and quaint, but we enjoyed it quite a bit.


For lunch we went to Johnny Corino's. We liked the Italian cuisine, but found out that there is one less than two miles from our house. I figured we were trying something that we wouldn't be getting around home. I was wrong.

After lunch we visited the Combat Air Museum. It was fun, but I don't think it was designed for Golden. She put up with it, though. There were two hangars of planes and three veterans who liked to talk about the importance of the planes in the hangars.


Saturday night we decided to go to Lane's Barbecue, only it was closed. So we decided to go to Hanover Pancake House. Also closed. It seems half of downtown Topeka shuts down on Saturday evenings. We eventually went to Wendy's.

Sunday morning on the way out of town we swung by Monroe Elementary, which I believe was one of the first racially integrated elementary schools in the country. We didn't actually go in because we were more than anxious to get home, but it was nice to see one more site before we left Topeka.

It was relaxing to get away and the decision to go was very worth it. Now, back to the grindstone.