Day 3.19: Colby, KS to Overland Park, KS

We didn’t sleep too late because we had a lot of driving still ahead of us, getting up for a quick breakfast and then hitting the road. We drove three more hours to Abilene, Kansas, where we pulled up to the Eisenhower Presidential Library. This informative museum also included his childhood home, which we were able to tour. There were two women speaking at FULL volume right behind us while we walked through the museum, and Arielle had to stop and wait for them to fully pass us at one point because it was impossible to concentrate. There was just one little sign about the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, which wasn’t nearly as exciting as Abe had hoped every time he had seen signs along our drive referencing this president’s very influential project.

We ate the sandwiches we had made at breakfast for lunch and continued driving through the rest of the relatively boring state of Kansas. We did opt to stop at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site and process the impact of that decision.

We had researched dinner options and accidentally crossed into Missouri to eat at a Kansas City barbecue place called Char Bar that we had found.

We had been advised by the Kansas City native we had met at the Colorado viewpoint a few days earlier that we needed to get barbecue, so we had found a place that had the vegan options Arielle had so desperately been seeking previously in locations like Austin. We were able to sit outside which was nice, and somehow ended up with the only vegan waitress working at this restaurant. She wasn’t too gung-ho about the smoked jackfruit sandwich, but Arielle decided to get it anyway. It turned out to be way too spicy, which Arielle discovered midway through the meal was because of the sauce, not the seasoning or the jackfruit itself. Abe ordered the burnt ends, which were great, and we also got these weird Crispy Jo-Jo Potatoes, described as inside-out white potatoes with barbecue seasoning, which were good at first but then got to be a lot. It was definitely a cool eating experience that felt local.

We left and passed Stateline Rd, taking us back into Kansas and to Foo’s Fabulous Café in Leawood, where we ordered a mint oreo frozen custard to share and they accidentally made two of them so we each got our own.

We drove another fifteen or so minutes to our hotel, the Candlewood Suites in Overland Park, and put them in the freezer to have later. We were told upon arrival that this hotel chain didn’t have a pool or free breakfast, which was disappointing, and we also learned that there was free laundry, which would have been a very helpful thing to know. We ate our ice cream, watched some TV in the hotel, and went to bed.

Approximate number of miles covered: 396