Sometimes random bits of information come together nicely. Here is a quote from a local blog…
I attended Kansas City, Missouri Public Schools way back before Kansas City became a hollow shell of a city and before the school district lost its will to live. From the fourth grade on, we were regularly treated to visits to the Nelson, The (then) Kansas City Philharmonic and other cultural treasures of the area.
In the sixties, Corinthian Hall was the herding place for throngs of children, delivered by groaning yellow buses from all corners of the district. We sat, cross-legged on the floor, ready to buddy up and explore, two-by-two, the wonders of the world contained inside the limestone and marble wonder.
I had always imagined Flint Hills to be a rocky desert-like area in the Central-Eastern Kansas where one could walk up to the nearest cliff and chisel away a piece of flint big enough to make a tomahawk. I guess I’ll add this to the list of many other things that didn’t turn out the way I imagined. Driving the Flint Hills Scenic Byway was somewhere on my list of things to do and it turned out to be probably one of the best, most relaxing day-trips from Kansas City, filled with nature, views, history, vast spaces that make you feel small and roads reaching all the way to the horizon. It’s hard to imagine covering these hills on foot, living on remote ranches, surviving without all the conveniences of the modern age. It’s fun to think about things like these while flying at high speeds in a comfortable vehicle with the windows down and the radio up.
The South end of the Scenic Byway is at Cassoday, KS, population 130, with just about as many signs proclaiming it to be the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World.
Prairie Chicken, also known as the “Tuna of the Prairie” are nowhere to be seen, probably busy hiding from the 130 hungry Cassodayans. The signs are the most photographed object in Cassoday.
We don’t have many traditions in my family. We don’t sit around the Seder table asking questions; we don’t eat Chinese food on Christmas; we don’t have Taco Tuesdays or Gefilte Fish Fridays. We are pretty ordinary people in that sense. Or every sense.
There is one tradition that I’d like to keep and pass along to my kid – sitting down for the road.
Every time we were about to leave on a trip my Dad always said “Let’s sit down for the road” and we would set down our suitcases and sit quietly for a minute. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do – when you are a kid on the way to an exiting destination the last thing you want to do is to be stopped in your tracks and sit around even for a minute. But then again it’s a minute well-spent. You could realize you forgot something, or just look around one last time so a memory of your place will travel with you and eventually make you homesick. You could concentrate, finalize a plan, prepare for the departure, as a pilot might say revving up the engine. Many useful things you can do in a minute. Or you can just not do anything and wait for your Dad to signal that the sitting down for the road is over and open the door to something that awaits outside.
I’ve done this ever since I can remember. I sat down in places I’ve never returned to; I sat down with people who I never got to see again; I sat down before the trips I remember and many forgotten ones. Now I get to tell my kid to sit down and I like the continuity of it. It’s a real tradition, beautiful in its simplicity and as meaningful as one wants it to be.
If you draw a 250-mile circle around Kansas City, the choices of major metropolitan areas to visit on a leisurely road trip are slim – St.Louis, Omaha, Tulsa. There are plenty of small towns within reasonable distance worth a visit but not warranting a special trip.
I had Tulsa, OK in my sights for a long time but every time I inquired about it, hardly any answers didn’t include some combination of a word “-hole”. It was time to discover Tulsa for myself, so over a long weekend I booked a 3.5 star hotel (the highest level available on priceline) in downtown Tulsa and after detours to Iola, Coffeyville and Chanute we finally crossed the border into Oklahoma. Before leaving I thoroughly checked my wardrobe – the shirt with some Arkansas sport team was out just in case, and my Larry the Cable Guy and Toby Keith t-shirts were in. I also practiced my best Oklahoman accent in front of the mirror to unsatisfactory results.
Some things about Tulsa turned out to be true, there was hardly anything to do there on a Saturday night. There was a concert in Cain’s Ballroom, but the line to get in was so long that only an ABBA reunion would make me consider standing in it. Two football teams from Oklahoma were playing on TV. Everything else was more or less dead. I know, I know – I just didn’t know where to look, but maybe I shouldn’t be expected to look so hard. Eventually we found some guy singing and playing guitar at the Gypsy – a hipster yet pleasant hangout not too far from Cain’s, maybe just a bit farther than the end of the line to the concert. We stayed there for over two hours and my kid enjoyed every minute of it, while I didn’t feel my usual for this type of place urge to kill myself, even as the performer switched from guitar to sitar(!).
We visited some Tulsa landmarks; drove around hunting for the best view of downtown skyline; ate some of the best hamburgers ever, served without pretense and reasonably priced; checked out parts of Route 66; and overall had a good time. So if you are itching for some weekend travel, Tulsa is not a bad place to visit, there is plenty to see and maybe even something to do.
Tulsa has a great-looking downtown famous for its Art Deco architecture (view from our hotel):
