Off the Beaten Path

Yearning a bit of seclusion or looking for new places to explore this autumn? Visit any of these seven destinations and you’ll leave feeling rejuvenated and refreshed.

Silverscreen actress Greta Garbo was famous for five little words: “I want to be alone.” In this age where it seems everyone has immediate access to us via some handheld device that calls for constant recharging, we can hardly blame her.

Looking beyond the most common destinations, we dug a little deeper to find some soothing spots where one can truly get away from it all. There’s something for everyone, from the art and music lover to the hunter/fisherman and Civil War buff.

So go ahead; shove that to-do list in a drawer. Put some miles behind you. Watch the fields spread before you. Because this fall, the only thing you really need to do is figure out which weekends are yours.

KANSAS CITY
Ah, Kansas City…synonymous with great barbecue and jazz, a walk through Country Club Plaza, a burger and shake from Winstead’s, and a drive down State Line Road. (Where else can car conversation sound like this? “You’re in Kansas; I’m in Missouri!”)
 
Where to Stay: Take Kansas City’s Ward Parkway or Wornall Road down to the Plaza, and you’ll see a number of grand old homes with carriage houses. Two blocks away is the Southmoreland on the Plaza Bed and Breakfast. Their luxury suite, the George Kessler, takes up the entire top floor of a carriage house. The inn has earned the reputation as one of the nation’s premier bed and breakfast properties, and has twelve other guestrooms.

Where to eat/what to do: Catch Ida McBeth, one of Kansas City’s grand dames of jazz, at Jardine’s on 45th and Main. In the historic garment district, dine at the Savoy Grill, Kansas City’s oldest restaurant. Made famous in the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” the Savoy is home to Booth Number Four, which has seen the likes of Presidents Warren G. Harding, Harry S Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
Around the corner, Majestic Steakhouse serves some of Kansas City’s most tender, melt-in-your-mouth center-cut filet mignons. Live jazz is always on tap downstairs. The Phoenix Jazz Pianobar and Grill, another great venue, is just a block away.

Weekend Events: September 1-3, Kansas City Irish Festival; September 2-October 15, Renaissance Festival (Bonner Springs); September 22-24, Seventy-Fifth Annual Plaza Art Fair; October 6-7, American Royal Barbeque; October 7, Westport Antique Fair; October 21, Crown Center Pumpkin Patch

When You Go:
Southmoreland on the Plaza Bed and Breakfast, 116 E 46th St., Kansas City
816.531.7979, southmoreland.com

Visit these Web sites for more info:
idamcbeth.com
jardines4jazz.com
majesticsteakhouse.com
phoenixjazz.net
visitkc.com


PLEASANTON, KANSAS
Twenty miles north of Fort Scott, next to the Kansas-Missouri border, is the small town of Pleasanton. A hotbed of activity during the Civil War as border ruffians rode the range, it’s now a calm and relaxing place to retreat.

Where to Stay: Cedar Crest Lodge is a 7,000-square-foot bed and breakfast, located on more than one hundred acres of beautiful rolling hills four miles east of Pleasanton. Established by former owners Mary Jo and Harold Leisure, it’s still home to Mary Jo’s studio, where she continues to pass on her knowledge of decorative painting (see related story on p. 12). Mary Jo’s signature roses are painted throughout the lodge.
If you can stand three and a half hours of pampering, try Cedar Crest’s Ultimate Spa Package—a full-body polish, tub session or body wrap, a full-body massage, relaxing spa lunch, grape peel foot session, and champagne or Moor mud facial.

Where to eat: Kress Tea Room & Pie Pantry, Great Plains Deli and Main Street Chop House and BBQ. (All in Fort Scott.)

What to do: Nearby are the Marais Des Cygnes State Historic Site, the Mine Creek Battlefield State Historic Site and Linn County Historical Museum. On your way home, stop in Fort Scott and take a trolley tour of graceful old mansions.
Events: September 16, Downtown Fall Festival (Fort Scott); September 24-25, Frontier Days: The Army in Indian Territory (Fort Scott); October 14, Traditional Arts & Crafts Demonstrations (Pleasanton); October 22, Mine Creek Battle Anniversary (Pleasanton)

When You Go:
Cedar Crest Lodge, 25939 E 1000 Rd.,
Pleasanton, Kansas
866.Cedar.00, cedarcrestlodge.com

Visit this Web site for more info:
fortscott.com


FLINT HIILLS
There’s nothing like the Flint Hills in autumn, when the native prairie grasses put on their soft purple and red hues. Head north from Wichita on the turnpike, and exit at Cassoday or Matfield Green. From here, you’ll go north on the scenic Hwy. 177 through Bazaar to Cottonwood Falls.


Where to Stay/Eat: Kansas’ only AAA four-diamond historic country inn/restaurant since 1997, the Grand Central Hotel and Grill has lured Wichitans up the turnpike for years as a place to dine and stay overnight for special occasions. The Grand Central offers fine dining for lunch and dinner (including award-winning beef), and an extensive wine list. Amenities include jetted whirlpool showers, cozy down comforters and bathrobes and fine linen. Complete your perfect day with a two-hour sunset tour of the Flint Hills on the Prairie Drifter, which departs from the Grand Hotel.

If you’re more of a rough rider and have always wondered what life was like for Laura Ingalls Wilder, take a trip on the Flint Hills Overland Wagon Train. This fall, experience life out on the Kansas prairie the weekends of September 9-10 and October 7-8. Expeditions  begin promptly at 9:30 am Saturday in Bazaar. Storytelling and songs follow a hearty evening meal on the range; bed down in a tent under the stars and wake to the sounds of the prairie.

Fun places to explore: Galleries, emporiums, mercantiles and cafés. Cottonwood Falls has all the charm of an historic central Kansas town. A visit inside Chase County Courthouse is a given. Upstairs in the county historical museum is a small exhibit of artifacts from the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s football coach. Explore Kansas’ only national park, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Tour the Z-Bar Ranch. Hike the nearby trails or take a seven-mile bus tour into the prairie.
At the end of your visit, take the road straight west that leads over to Elmdale, past the Chase State Fishing Lake—this is another pretty, scenic drive worth the trip. You’ll come out on Hwy. 50, which hooks up with Hwy. 77 before heading south, down to El Dorado.
Or, feel as if you’re driving on top of the world by heading north on Hwy. 177 from the preserve to Council Grove.

Events: September 22-24, Chase County Broomweed Festival (downtown Cottonwood Falls); October 1, Flint Hills Ranch Rodeo (Strong City); October 7, Annual Partners on the Prairie Celebration (Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve). And there’s always something going on musically at the Emma Chase Café!

When You Go:
Grand Central Hotel, 215 Broadway
Cottonwood Falls, 800.951.6763
grandcentralhotel.com

Flint Hills Overland Wagon Train
316.321.6300, wagontrainkansas.com

Visit these Web sites for more info:
chasecountychamber.org
nps.gov/tapr
emmachasecafe.com

LAWRENCE
Many Wichitans burn up the turnpike each weekend to catch a game in Lawrence. The Berkeley and Boulder of Kansas explodes in color come fall—above and beyond the red and blue in Memorial Stadium.

Where to Stay: Circle S Ranch & Country Inn, ten miles outside of Lawrence, was named one of the twelve most romantic bed and breakfasts in the United States by bedandbreakfast.com and one of the top ten destinations for business travelers by Arrington’s Bed and Breakfast Journal. Walk around the twelve hundred acres of tallgrass prairies and timber and discover bison, longhorns and twenty ponds. (Yes, you may fish! Poles are supplied.)

Circle S also has a full menu of spa services. Twelve themed rooms feature king-sized beds, whirlpools and clawfoot tubs. Join guests at the eight-person hot tub housed in the inn’s silo, with a drink at the nightly social hour, or over the inn’s hearty country style breakfast.

Where to eat: For lunch, Wheatfields Bakery Café at 904 Vermont St. (Lawrence has some of the best fresh-baked bread in the state, so grab a loaf to go.) Krause Dining at 811 New Hampshire, which serves a highly styled dinner in a beautiful atmosphere. (Call ahead for reservations—785.838.9830.)

Events: September 10, Fall Arts and Crafts Festival; September 30-October 27, Downtown Friday Gallery Walk; throughout October, Lawrence ArtsFest; through November 11, Farmers’ Market; October 7-8; Kaw Valley Farm Tour
Fun places to explore: Au Marche, a European grocery market at 931 Massachusetts, and Brits at 929 Massachusetts, where you’ll find Union Jack souvenirs, pub items, cookbooks and teapots. Outside the city limits, take Hwy. 40 west to Topeka, a scenic road full of winding, hilly roads. Follow Hwy. 24 north from Lawrence to Perry Lake, where you’ll find another scenic drive along the eastern shoreline.

When You Go:
Circle S Ranch & Country Inn
3325 Circle S Lane, Lawrence
800.625.2839, circlesranch.com

Visit these Web sites for more info:
wheatfieldsbakery.com
aumarche.com
britsusa.com


MARION COUNTY
For a laid-back weekend out in the country, head to Marion County. You’ll think you’re in Maine as you drive past Marion’s city park, or in Missouri or Arkansas when you come upon Lakeshore Drive, a charming street that wraps around Marion County Lake. A few miles southeast of the town of Marion, you’ll marvel at the quaint lake houses lined up along the shore.

Where to Stay: Watch the sun rise from the deck of Charlie and Lynn Unruh’s NorthShore GuestHouse. The entire three-bedroom house out in the country is yours. Look up at a canopy of stars at night or sit by a campfire.

An overnight stay here is truly relaxing. The beds are dreamy. Breakfast is hand-delivered in a picnic basket. (Ours included a hashbrown omelet in a cast-iron skillet, homemade bread, and a breakfast “sundae” made with strawberries, granola chunks and yogurt.) Take a morning jog down the gravel road. Play the piano or horseshoes, or soak in an oversized tub. You’ll want to come back the moment you leave.

What to do: Go for an early-morning fishing expedition on Marion County Reservoir, just a stone’s throw away. Come back loaded with wiper (a cross between a white and striped bass, perhaps the most aggressive fish in Kansas waters).

Places to Explore: Where can you buy a saddle, wallpaper border, a power washer, pocket watch, poker chips, telephones, rollerskates and roll-top desks? At HRK, a unique independently owned store located at Main and Roosevelt in Marion; look for the blue roof.

Travel northeast to Pilsen, where a statue bears honor to Father Emil J. Kapaun, the Korean War chaplain known for preaching in the midst of shellfire and assisting wounded comrades, no matter their race or station in life. In the basement of St. John Nepomucene Church is a collection of Kapaun memorabilia, the patron of Wichita’s Kapaun-Mt. Carmel Catholic High School.

Where to Eat: In Marion, sample the sandwiches and soups at Zimmerman’s. Or drive over to Hillsboro for an authentic Low German meal at Old Town Restaurant, housed in an old egg-processing plant.

Events: September 2-3, Florence Labor Day Celebration; October 7, Oktoberfest in Lincolnville;  October 15, Scarecrows on Parade in Ramona

When You Go:
NorthShore–GuestHouse
1475 240th St., Marion
877.826.8728, northshore-guesthouse.com

Visit this Web site for more info:
marioncountyks.org


WICHITA
If you can’t get out of the city limits, you can still treat yourself to a special weekend. Start with dinner at Southwinds at Hyatt Regency. (How about a double-cut Bourbon grilled pork chop and grilled asparagus spears?). Then head up to the Hyatt’s presidential suite. Here, on the seventeenth floor, you can watch the sun set over the city with views from three different directions. There’s definitely room to roam—with a bathroom fit for a king (or queen), and separate dining and lounge areas. Relax and watch DVDs on a 32-inch flat screen TV, play on the computer or listen to the suite’s stereo system or IPOD (programmed with all of your favorites). VIPs who have slept here include Harrison Ford, Luciano Pavarotti, Barry Manilow and Cher.

Spend the next evening dining at Cibola’s chef’s table. Watch the line cook and servers prepare your custom-made, six-course meal. (Requires special reservations.) For example, start with Caviar Napolean, saffron crab and roasted corn chowder, Maytag blue cheese gremolata, and the Cibola calamari salad. Move on to pan-seared sea bass, roasted butternut squash risotto, port cherry glaze, and spicy pecan and mache salad. Then dig into some grilled filet and butter-poached lobster tail, truffled fingerling potatoes and a lobster cream sauce. Finish with a flourless chocolate cake.

When You Go:
Hyatt Regency Hotel, 400 W Waterman, Wichita
293.1234, wichita.hyatt.com

Visit this Web site for more info:
cibolarestaurant.com


QUAIL HUNTING IN COWLEY COUNTY
For the past three years, Dan Drake’s Signature Hunts has offered guided hunting trips forty-five minutes from Wichita, out in Cowley County where he grew up. (Drake calls it a hobby that’s gone out of control.) Out-of-state hunters make the trip to Drake’s family farm just to have access to five thousand acres of what he calls “the best deer hunting and quail hunting grassland and timber in the world.”

Signature Hunts’ controlled shooting area allows them to extend upland quail hunting from September 1 to March 31. At other times of the year, guests may also hunt turkeys, pheasant and deer. You may have seen Drake’s hunts listed in local charity programs; he donates at least four or five  per year to lucky auction winners.

What you get: Overnight stay out in the Flint Hills in a 1880s limestone cabin, a fully guided hunt with dogs, meals and transportation to and from the field. Signature Hunts can accommodate up to four or five hunters at a time. They’ll even clean and package your birds for travel.

When You Go:
Signature Hunts, 204.4312
Signaturehunts.com