Travelogue - To Colorado Across Kansas: The Earth is Flat

Thinking that visiting a good friend who now lives in Colorado sounds like a good idea - that is, until we realize that the trip means cruising through Kansas, east to west.  Nothing.  Nothing.  80 miles and hour, and nothing.  Will it ever end?

A few things, however, have changed the landscape - not the real one, but the landscape of what one can expect when pushing the pedal to the metal in hopes that the drab and drear will disappear more quickly.  The internet is one of those things.

If a person is not driving - if one is merely a passenger - one can spend hour upon hour reading Facebook posts, e-mail, updates from Messenger, and the latest baseball scores on Bleacher Report.  If one has an agenda, for instance, if one knows that he or she will be in a certain town - or close - at the lunch hour, Trip Advisor will provide all kinds of information about places to eat because other brave souls have done so before:  where restaurants are located, the names and locations of the top 10 restaurants in that town, how much it might cost to eat at any of those restaurants, and on and on.

Eating at a local restaurant in a little town is a little bit adventure and a little bit gamble.  Just because the food might have been good the week before means nothing in connection with what it tastes like today.  But as opposed to eating at Applebee's or Burger King, it's usually worth the risk.

So in Junction City, we tried Negril, a little Caribbean/Jamaican joint in the middle of the street that looked as if it needed a good going over with bleach on a stick.  This was unexpected.  Who could imagine finding a restaurant owned and run by an obviously immigrant woman – a woman of color, with an accent, who prominently displayed pictures of Barack Obama – in good old Red Kansas?  And yet, there it was.  Negril had been praised mightily by many who lived in Junction City or had passed through for some unknown reason.  The dish most raved about was goat curry.  While I am adventurous enough to go to Negril, which needed a paint job and a cleaning crew for the ladies’ room, I am not adventurous enough to try curried cabrito.  I did, however, inhale the chicken curry.

I do not particularly care for dark chicken meat.  Though I reveled in eating the drumstick when I was a child, as an adult, I find the meat to be somewhat chunky and greasy – all in all, unappealing.  So when the owner served the curry to me, I was distressed to see that the chicken meat was from three drumsticks and was still on the bone.  The cook had, however, cut the leg so that the useless bottom part was amputated, and what was left was the meaty upper portion.

I have no idea what she did to those drumsticks.  I assume she stewed them in the curry sauce, but whatever she did, I ate it with relish – and not the pickle type.  The meat was tender, flavorful, and definitely not greasy nor chunky.  It fell from the bone with merely a touch of my fork, and then it disappeared into my mouth, never to be seen again.  The curry was served with rice and peas, which were cooked to perfection – tender, but not soft.  Apparently, I need to learn how to cook chicken legs.  Max had the jerk chicken, which I tasted, and his chicken leg was just as tender as mine – and as flavorful.  It did not however, come with a sauce.  The star of that plate was the jerk seasoning.    I decided not to eat all the food on my plate so that I would be able to enjoy another meal that day – after all, what is travel other than an opportunity to find and eat good food in different places?

And that is just what we did.  I had made a reservation for a hotel in Goodland, Kansas, for the night, and so when we arrived, some nine hours after we had begun our travels that morning, I again went to Trip Advisor for some advice about where to eat dinner.  Everybody and his brother suggested Tequilas [sic] Mexican Grill.  So we went there.

The food was good.  Unfortunately, or fortunately (however you might look at it) however, we have been spoiled by El Tapatio in Sedalia.  El Tap's salsa is superb, the rice is delicious, and the refried beans have not only flavor, but also texture.  Tequilas was lacking on all three counts; however, Tequilas had larrupin’ good marinated pork, which I ordered, and Max liked the shrimp in mango sauce, but he didn’t particularly like the sauce.  Neither did I.

We had a reservation at the Holiday Inn Express in Goodland, which turned out to be a good bet.  Although it is not the newest iteration of this chain, for $100, we got a clean room, a clean bathroom that was big enough for me to put on my make-up while Max brushed his teeth, an in-room Keurig, and as much breakfast as we wanted for free.

All of these things made driving through Kansas tolerable.  I don’t really have anything against Kansas, other than Kris Kobach and the fact that the horizon could convince anyone that the Earth is flat, but driving through is simply tedious.  I know of no other way to describe it.  Regardless, we found bright spots that made it just fine.