BudgetTravel

Erika Nelson with her traveling art exhibit (Morgan & Owens) JUNE 2006 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Splurges! • Secret Hotels of the French Riviera • Testing our Cruise Tips • Road Trip: Eastern Kansas • Trip Coach: Japan • 40 Best Vacations

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Nightlife

Day 2: Elmdale to Wilson

Patrick and I wake up to an elaborate meal of scrambled eggs, sausage links, frosted lemon bread, toast, juice, and coffee--all prepared by Joan and served on a sunlit veranda. Over breakfast, Jim offers us a tour of their land on his off-road 4x4. I wouldn't expect bumping around treeless green pastures to be all that exciting, but the two hours we spend cavorting on Jim's lumpy fields end up being incredibly fun. We encounter mating cattle. ("They don't have much manners, do they?" says Jim.) We tease a lone bull, safely restrained behind a fence. And at one point, coyotes--"ki-yotes" in Kansan--cry in the distance. When Patrick notices one scrambling up a hill, Jim slams on the gas. We chase after the coyote at full speed until it escapes over the crest.

The Clover Cliff Ranch B&B is a few miles from the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, an 11,000-acre national park devoted entirely to grass. The name, as it turns out, is false advertising in May. The grass is tall--if you're an ant. The park truly earns its name in the autumn, when the grass reaches between three and six feet. A bus tour runs through the grounds three times a day April through October. It couldn't possibly surpass our morning adventure, however, so we visit an information booth/barn where our favorite Emma Chase violinist, Lucy Smith, pops up yet again (she's a park volunteer).

The route north along the Flint Hills Scenic Byway (K-177) is the most beautiful stretch of road we travel. There are grassy mounds undulating along the horizon, dormant farming patches the color of cocoa, and clouds that resemble generous gobs of shaving cream.

It's lunchtime when we arrive at Council Grove, a town of 2,300 with a buffalo mural painted on City Hall. Hays House, founded in 1857 by Daniel Boone's great-grandson, bills itself as the oldest continually operating restaurant west of the Mississippi. I order skillet-fried chicken, which is crunchy, but a little dry. Patrick's chicken club sandwich, on the other hand, is a winner. We cross the street to the Aldrich Apothecary, an old-time drugstore/soda fountain, for a chocolate ice-cream soda.

A few hours later, we make it to Wilson. The town has a lot of rusty silos and abandoned storefronts, and we're a little spooked. The Midland Hotel was nicely renovated in 2003, but even it's sort of eerie. After a dinner of beers and a ham and cheese sandwich in the hotel's basement tavern, a local whispers that the inn has a history of strange occurrences. Legend has it that a former owner hanged himself in the main stairwell after he accidentally killed his son in a shoot-out. We think the young woman is teasing us, especially when she says that the third floor--where we're staying--used to be a chicken coop. But later, when I check the hotel's website, I find some of what she was saying confirmed.