Day Three

Alright alright starting off with the good stuff – Salina, KS Hampton Inn rating:

Cleanliness: 9/10 – they had the lysol seal of cleanliness

Hospitality: 9/10

Bed comfort: 10/10 – same beds as before + blackout curtains!

Water pressure: 10/10

Breakfast: 8/10 – surprisingly had a limited hot breakfast, plus my muffin and yogurt were better today

---

Alright onto day three of the drive out West! We learned that Kroger out west is called Dillon’s and that our Kroger plus card still works there. Yay for saving 20 cents on gas! Our first fun sighting of the day was a gigantic wind farm! If you look in the picture below (really REEEEALLY closely), you can see tons of them off in the distance. It was the same view on the other side of the road. We passed about 5 more ‘farms’ on our drive.

Our first stop was a little under an hour away in a little town called Wilson, KS, also known as the “Czech capital of Kansas”. The town’s first Czech settler Francis J. Swehla arrived in 1874, and the Czech culture began and is still extremely prevalent in the town today, including the World’s largest hand-painted Czech egg! It stands 20 ft tall and 15 ft wide, decorated by a local artist Christine Slechta. There are also a bunch of smaller eggs around town painted in all different designs.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The entire town was such a strange site. The architecture is still reminiscent of the early 1900s with limestone use (The Midland Hotel, the Opera House, and the Old City Jail). After 1905, brick became more widely used (the City Grade School). Also, half of the buildings are dilapidated and run down and yet are still being used! The old Midland Railroad Hotel has been standing since the mid 1890s and is haunted, and the old Czech Opera House burned down in 2009 and is being converted into an outdoor performance space, which was actually beautiful to hear – even through utter destruction, art can and will persist.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

And for the historians out there that want even MORE info on Wilson, its history, and the Czech egg and culture in the town, the below gives you just that!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After leaving the egg behind (we actually bought some egg keychains, so technically we took a bit of the culture with us!), we ventured onto Goodland, KS. Now, there’s not much to this city, but what it does have to offer is unique and kind of awe-inspiring. I present to you the World’s Largest Easel – a giant reproduction of Van Gogh’s Three Sunflowers in a Vase!

• 

• 

The painting is an 80 ft tall ‘celebration of art and agriculture’. It was painted by Cameron Cross in 2001 (and repainted in 2012), and the Goodland Rotary Club now maintains and promotes the area. It was really a sight to see – and there was a dog park right next to it!

As we travel further west on I-70, we thought the bottom was about to fall out on us. Thankfully, it moved just out of the way as we passed and we only got a little shower, which was good because I did not want to be driving out on these 75mph roads in a downpour.

And in a few short hours, we make our way into Denver, CO. (There was a sign as we were leaving Kansas that said “Leaving Kansas. Come Again”, and the only thing I could think of was “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!” And there’s my Wizard of Oz pun for the Kansas duration of our trip.)

But we made it through day three, picked up some dinner at Teller’s Taproom and Kitchen (which was SO DELICIOUS – french onion soup and a wedge salad for Jill, tomato bisque and a fancy grilled cheese with caramelized onions, apples, and local cheese on a walnut cranberry raisin bread for Dani), and now we’re winding down for the night. Good thing this hotel room also has blackout curtains, because I have a feeling we’ll be in bed before the sun goes down (hello Mountain Time!). Until tomorrow!

---

MILES: 446

TIME: 8 hours with 4 stops (Wilson was a 30+ min walk-around)

NUMBER OF TIKTOK SONGS ON THE RADIO: All of them

---