Kansas Day 4: Eisenhower, Oz, & History Lesson

The one thing I can say about the little Swedish inn was that we got a good night's sleep. The only hope I had left for this town was the massive Swedish buffet we were promised, and it was a huge disappointment. There was nothing Swedish or authentic about it, she was just bringing store bought stuff from the back and putting it out on plates. The only warm thing was the coffee (which I never got fixed properly because she'd whisk the creamer and sugar away after about 15 seconds) and the waffles dipped straight from a big Costco bucket of pre-made waffle mix.

It was a cute place - our suite was at the top of these stairs, so we had a nice and private area.We got out of there and headed towards Abilene, Kansas to the Eisenhower Presidential complex. In the 50's a law was passed that each former president gets there own presidential museum and library, and Eisenhower's is in Abilene where he grew up. There's only 12 in the country since the law is relatively new. Initially I thought this sounded like it would be a pretty boring stop on our tour of Kansas, but it actually turned out to be a highlight.

This is where Dwight, his wife Mamie and their son who died as an infant are buried. We had no idea there was a class full of kids in there when we were taking this picture and they burst out about a minute later.
We had parked Lilli next to the little fence they have around their graves so we could take some pictures in the chapel when she had a MASSIVE sneeze. We looked over and nearly died ourselves - her pacifier had flown underneath the fence and was within an inch or two of literally falling on their graves. She was pretty pleased with her mad skillz.
Another view of how close she came to us having an embarrassing conversation about how a pacifier might have fallen on the grave of a former president with the center curators.
From there we walked around the library, which is primarily designed for research and mostly unavailable to just be viewed. Across from the presidential library was the presidential museum. I wonder what came first - the museum housing his legacy or the ugly smoke-spewing factory in the background???
The Museum was a lot larger than it looked and we learned quite a bit about his life and work (of course we really didn't get to read everything since we knew Lilli would only last a certain period of time in her stroller and we really didn't want her to run free in there.) Much of the museum focused on World War 2 and his contributions.

Lilli offers the soldier her paci in exchange for his cup....
Of course Brent found a way to jump into my picture....

Mamie Eisenhower really had some style! They had a ton of her ballgowns on display, as well as her wedding dress, hat collection and even the high chair they used. They had a pair of shoes of hers that were inscribed in the insole as being especially made for the First Lady Mrs Eisenhower. How cool would that be! Maybe one day some of Lilli's clothes will be on display in a museum (of course they're 95% bought on consignment, ha!)
I thought these shoes were really cool - they were worn during Germany in the winter to keep soldier's feet warm. They don't look like they'd be very comfy for running to escape the enemy though!It was really a great Museum. I'm glad we stopped to check it and and it's actually made me want to add seeing the other 11 Presidential Centers to our list of lifetime "to-do's." It also made me want to learn more about him since it seems like he was such a popular guy with all the tons of I Like Ike stuff.

Here's the statue of him in the middle of the complex. It was such a pretty day (finally!)Once we got out of the Museum we let Lilli run free since she'd been so patient inside. Look at that running stride!!! She's going to be my running pal one day! (Last weekend she literally walked .6 of a mile, completely on our own when we walked down to the neighborhood bakery. She is amazing!)She had a great time chasing birds. She's obsessed with birds.From there we visited the house Eisenhower grew up in that they've moved to the complex and then we shopped and bought a few things in the gift store. I'd highly recommend visiting the Eisenhower Center if you're ever in that part of Kansas. Everything except the Museum is free, and that was only $7/person (and Lilli being free). You could really spend a long time in there just reading through the exhibits.

This part of Kansas starts getting back into the beautiful Flint Hills area. The sky seems to be so close and you could see forever.

I love the shadow of the clouds on the Plains.
Our next stop was completely unplanned - the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas. I'd seen a couple of brochures for it and some billboards, and when I mapped it it was only 10 miles out of the way we were already headed. I'm not sure if it was newer than my travel guides or what. (I think my books were 2005 or so, I always check them out from the library so I am limited in how new things are.)
The Museum was AWESOME! Such a nice surprise. You walk in through a screen door, like you're on the Kansas side of Dorothy's house and then into color and suddenly you're in OZ! They had a huge collection of all sorts of memorabilia organized by character.
It wasn't crowded and everything (mostly) was in glass or in such a way a curious toddler really couldn't do any damage, and so we let Lilli roam free. She loooved anything with Toto or the Cowardly Lion. I'm pretty sure she didn't understand why all the fun looking toys were behind glass though!
They had cool little vignettes for each character, and then a dark and "scary" little haunted forest you had to walk through with winged monkeys around and the Wicked Witch up on the wall above you.

Toto!!! (Or more like Dog!Dog!Dog!)
You could sit in the Wizard's throne for photo opps so that was a lot of fun! She was waving to the camera here....
And kisses for Mommy here....
It was a great museum and had way more stuff in it that it really appeared from the outside. And it was also pretty affordable - $7/person and Lilli was free. Afterwards we just had to have a late lunch at Toto's Tacoz!
If you're counting this is now the THIRD time in a row we'd had Mexican food! The day before we'd had Taco Bell for lunch and then a Mexican restaurant for dinner and now this taco joint! It was also a nice surprise and was really more of a baja style taco joint with lots of fresh ingredients. I had a great avocado and black bean taco that was insanely enormous. Lilli loved her quesadilla and rice and we all really enjoyed our food.
On the way out of town and back to the interstate we saw a saw to a Historic Old Dutch Windmill, so we followed the signs and saw this:
So pretty! We didn't get out to walk around it (Lilli was already asleep in the back seat) but it was a nice surprise and it looked like they had a few other historic buildings right around it you could walk around.
From there we continued to Topeka, the state capital of Kansas:
We stopped at the historic Monroe School, which is the National Landmark Site for the court case of Brown vs Topeka Board of Education, which ended segregation in schools. It's a very cool old school just sort of stuck in a neighborhood off the backside of downtown Topeka.


Just the downstairs is open with various classrooms dedicated to memorabilia of the end of segregation over the years.
It's a fairly small museum and pretty much no one was there so once again we were able to let Lilli peruse the exhibits without bothering anyone. It was completely free and since it's a National Landmark State Park we were able to get her a passport stamp from the Ranger for her State Park Passport book.

That was our last designated stop for the trip, and we were pretty proud we had made them all and been fairly successful and maneuvering everything with a temperamental toddler in tow! Now we just headed from Topeka back towards Kansas City, and our hotel for the night which was a short drive for the airport (and technically in Missouri).
We really didn't take many pictures that night of our hotel! We stayed at the Argosy Casino and Resort. Casinos have the best rooms and restaurants, and their room prices are always so affordable because they want you to spend all your money in the casino. It was a beautiful hotel and we had a great dinner at the buffet where they literally had EVERYTHING you might have wanted. Lilli was a PILL though. She's normally so good at restaurants but she was just wound up and throwing things and pretty much awful which stank because there was SO much to choose from food-wise and I don't think we really got to enjoy it. And then she was just terrible to get to sleep. It literally took us THREE hours to get her to sleep and Brent finally just took her to the car and drove around a couple of minutes. It was exhausting!

And that was our last full day of vacation. One final post to come of our flight home!