Since we only have a few weekends left together before I ship off to Australia, my husband and I are trying to spend as much time together as possible. That means I got to spend this past weekend in Kansas. Yeah, that's right...Kansas.
It was a last minute plan...obviously - no one plans to go to Kansas for the weekend. I found a cheap one-way ticket back to Illinois from Wichita on Sunday night, so it was a go. Chris and I left at around six in the morning and headed on the long drive down to Kansas.
As weird as it may sound, I think the drive was my favorite part of the trip. I don't know what it is about being trapped in a car with the worst scenery ever, but I always love road trips with him. Maybe it's the undivided attention... or maybe it's the singing. Either way we had a fun relaxing ride down and made it into town around 4 or so Friday afternoon.
All I can say is Kansas looked exactly like what I expected. Really small town-ish, if that makes any sense. Very flat... and plain.
So what do you do on a Friday night in downtown McPherson, Ks? You go to one of the two nice restaurants in town. We went to a place called Amics, a little tapas right in the heart of downtown. I use the words 'tapas' and 'heart of downtown' very loosely. We were lucky enough to go to Amics when they were hosting a wine tasting. It was really fun! Seriously. There were about twenty five to thirty people in the back half of the restaurant and they had the local wine distributor lead us through a tasting of five different white wines. Besides tasting the wines (we loved all but one of them) it was great to get to know some of the people of McPherson. Everyone was really friendly and in true Chris Olson style, we had a few new best friends by the end of the evening.
Chris had to work most of the day on Saturday so the wife of the owner of the local office offered to take me around town. "Sure, that would be great!" I said, wondering how this was going to turn out.
Michelle picked me up from the hotel around 11 and off we went! Well, not exactly.... I hop in the car and she says
"Well, what do you like to do?"
"Uhh... what is there to do?"
"Hmmm.... yeah, not much"
Oh boy. This is going to be a long day.
Somehow, by the power of greyskull, we were able to stretch what really should have been a five minute drive around the town into a few hours of chatter, lunch, and a little shopping. Of course we ended up, you guessed it, downtown. There actually were a few cute little knick knack stores, and it was fun to see Michelle talk to literally every other person that walked by. I'm still trying to figure out if it's because the town is that small or if everyone really knows each other. I think it's a little bit of both.
So what do you do on a Saturday night in McPherson, Ks? No, you don't go to the second of the two nice restaurants in town, you go to the country club. Oh yeah, up in the club! Of course we were li-ter-ally the only people in the club, but the drinks were delish and the food was surprisingly tasty.
I didn't get to see Chris as much as I would have liked to, but it was great having a few extra hours that I wouldn't have had otherwise. And of course having a few fond memories of Kansas too.
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