On the Road: Boulder to Chicago
We had 1,000+ miles to travel between Boulder and Chicago, so we decided to take a long weekend and make overnight stops in two states we hadn’t visited before - Kansas and Missouri. At least 75% of this journey would be on Interstate 70 West across the Great Plains - a route notorious for being flat and monotonous. Although we prefer to avoid major interstate highways, the alternative routes would have added hours to our trip. So we decided to make the best of it.
Honestly, there isn’t much to say about driving I-70 through eastern Colorado and most of Kansas. There was an endless succession of farms. Most were growing corn, but there were also some wind farms (Kansas is second to Texas in wind potential) and one cattle feedlot (smelly, but small). We passed the time with an audiobook (Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything). And we stopped briefly to see the World’s Largest Czech Egg in the town of Wilson, Kansas, where there is an active Czech community. (In case you were wondering, the egg is made of fiberglass, is 20 feet tall, and weighs 4 tons!)
The plains gave way to rolling hills as we neared Topeka, Kansas - our first overnight stop. We had originally planned on Kansas City, but made a last-minute switch to Topeka. It turned out to be a great move! The drive was an hour shorter (8.5 hours), which made up for losing an hour changing time zones. We stayed in a historic hotel in the heart of downtown and enjoyed an outstanding dinner in their onsite restaurant, The Weather Room. In the morning, we stopped to admire the state capitol before going to the Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park - another great reason to visit Topeka.
After touring Brown v. Board, we waved goodbye to Topeka and drove about an hour on I-70 to Kansas City, Kansas (KCK). It was perfect timing for lunch at the iconic Joe’s Bar-B-Que, in a converted gas station. Our sandwiches were delicious - and the cole slaw was excellent - but we agreed we were somewhat spoiled by all the great BBQ we’d had in Texas. By the way, we were curious about why Missouri also has a Kansas City (KCMO) - it turns out KCMO came first and is much larger.
After lunch we continued along I-70 toward St. Louis, Missouri, our second overnight stop. Steve thought he might feel sleepy after that big lunch, so we rocked out to music by the 70’s and 80’s bands Kansas and Styx. Funny how we can still remember all the song lyrics from when we were in high school. Am I right?
Outside of St. Louis, we stopped at Puzzle Warehouse, where I had fun browsing THOUSANDS of jigsaw puzzles and allowed Steve to buy me just four. In downtown St. Louis, we checked into another historic hotel and took a rideshare to dinner. In the beautifully restored Grand Hall of St. Louis Union Station, we had cocktails and apps while watching the light show on the train station’s ornate barreled ceiling. Afterward, we walked back to the hotel, admiring the downtown landmarks like City Hall (resembling a Parisian hotel) and the Citygarden Sculpture Park. It was just 8:00pm on a Friday night, but the streets were deserted, and it was a relief to get back to our hotel without incident. St. Louis is a bigger city, but we preferred Topeka.
In the morning, we visited the impressive Gateway Arch, just a short walk from the hotel. By noon, we were back on the road for the last segment of the trip: 4.5 hours’ drive on Interstate 55 North to Chicago. Much of this stretch of I-55 was built atop the old Route 66, and one section is now called the Barack Obama Presidential Expressway. Like much of the country, we were in a heat dome, and as Chicago’s skyscrapers came into view, the car’s thermometer read 100℉! We felt lucky to have spent the afternoon in an air-conditioned car, and it felt good to be “home” after the long drive.
