Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

So advises the Dalia Lama, and I kept that in mind when planning a three-day outing during our Thanksgiving Break from work. I’ve learned that we do best on our work breaks when we bookend them with weekends at home, and for Thanksgiving Break we wanted to celebrate the holiday at home with my mother.

All that left Monday-Wednesday free, and on travel days, we prefer to only be on the road for five hours or less and that includes a break every half-hour or so for Wendy’s comfort and our mutual health. Familiar destinations satisfying those limitations include northwest Arkansas, the mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Wichita, or Kansas City. We’ve also made jaunts to Sulphur, Hutchinson, and Springfield over the years, but Quartz Mountain really needs four days.

I prefer warmer weather and more leaves on the trees for a dayhike in the topography to the southeast, so I discounted those destinations for late autumn. Knowing Barbie-loving Wendy would appreciate the opportunity to revisit The Doll Cradle shop just west of Kansas City, I gave that some attention.

For decades I have enjoyed the changing exhibits at the splendid Union Station in Kansas City, but this year it has the cleverly titled Titanic: An Immersive Voyage, and Wendy and I already did the Titanic experience in Branson. So while I knew we would enjoy lunching at Country Club Plaza in KC and then we could stop in at The Doll Cradle, I wasn’t excited about following our usual practice of staying at the Marriott Courtyard. As it turns out, that hotel has now closed for a $31 million renovation and rebranding.

My eyes were tracing the route from Kansas City west to Shawnee, and farther west I spied Lawrence, less than an hour west of Kansas City along the Kansas River. What did I know about Lawrence?

The University of Kansas…Dad was a Jayhawk in the 1940s. A major state university means they’ll probably have a good art museum. Given Lawrence’s age, maybe they’ll have a decent history museum. Plenty of places to eat in a college town. I’ve heard Lawrence is a “pretty” spot in Kansas. Yep…let’s mix in something new by staying in Lawrence after making our stops in Kansas City.

So on Monday morning we headed east in Wendy’s minivan along US 60 to Nowata to then turn north and take US 169 up through Coffeyville and past Cherryvale and Chanute, then angling northeast from Garnett to Paola and then north to Olathe. From there we took Interstate 35 to the Shawnee Mission Parkway onto the Ward Parkway to arrive at the Country Club Plaza.

Traffic is steadily worsening in the various urban areas, with my alarm increasing over time at the recklessness of drivers in Tulsa, OKC, and KC, never mind the insanity in DFW. In Kansas City, which has some winding parkways given its age and topography, one vehicle sideswiped another just in front of us at one curvy interchange.

We made it to the parking garage intact, but the vehicular craziness is one reason Gillon Property Group, which acquired the Country Club Plaza in June 2024 for about $175 million, is proposing to reduce 47th Street from four driving to two driving lanes by adding bike lanes along with other traffic calming measures. It is also proposing closing some of the district’s internal streets to vehicular traffic.

I realize that barbecue is a big dining draw in Kansas City for many, but BBQ is not a favorite for me. We frequent three chain restaurants at the Plaza: McCormick & Schmick’s, Buca di Beppo, and The Cheesecake Factory, with the last one our choice for lunch this time. That might seem odd, given they have a Tulsa location, but in Tulsa we usually eat at El Chico or Kilkenny’s.

I parked the minivan in the free garage within the building that houses The Cheesecake Factory, and I had my usual lunch portion of Orange Chicken while Wendy had the Spicy Crispy Chicken Sandwich.

We enjoyed our lunch, but the portions are such that we never have room for cheesecake. We just had enough time left to drive over to Shawnee and let Wendy shop at The Doll Cradle before it closed at 3 p.m.

Wendy bought a couple of Barbies there, and I listened to a mother and daughter who came in about having a childhood favorite, a wellworn stuffed elephant, reworked by doll rescuer Connie Harrell. Our first visit to the shop was at Christmas in 2023, and I was relieved to note that the displays had changed, so the uncanny valley doll wasn’t around to unnerve me. Once Wendy had made her purchases, we proceeded southwest on Interstate 35 and then west on Kansas Highway 10 to Lawrence.

The Hogback Hilton

When researching hotels in Lawrence, The Oread, part of the Tapestry Collection by Hilton, caught my attention. It looked impressive, and from it we could easily walk south to the Spencer Museum of Art. The KU National History Museum was also just down the street, but many visits in childhood to the old Stovall Museum in Norman, and its much nicer successor, the Sam Noble Museum, along with various other natural history museums on our travels, made that less appealing to us.

The Oread is about eight stories at the front and ten in the back, with multi-story underground parking. It is constructed out of limestone, making it seem much older, but it was built in 2009. I booked a king condo room for two nights for a whopping $1,100. Jeepers, but surely that would mean a great experience. Well, ya don’t always get what ya pay fer.

We first drove north through Lawrence along Massachusetts Street all the way north to the Kansas River. I wanted to scope out the downtown shops and restaurants, figuring we would eat in that historic district during our stay. The drive was a pleasant one, with many Victorian homes painted in light pastels adorning the streets south of downtown. As we approached the unseen river, we turned west to climb Mount Oread to the hotel.

The Mount is a prominent hill that is the foundation for KU, named after the long-defunct Oread Institute women’s college in Massachusetts, founded by Eli Thayer. Lawrence was founded in 1854 by settlers from Massachusetts sent there by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, another creation of Eli Thayer, which transported anti-slavery immigrants into Kansas Territory in a bid to shift the political power there and lead it into becoming a free state rather than a slave state. We were in the heart of what was known as Bleeding Kansas from 1854 to 1859, and the home of the Jayhawkers:

Mount Oread’s earlier name was Hogback Hill, so I’ll say that we parked in the drive at the Hogback Hilton and walked into the lobby, where we were welcomed by an unpleasant sewer smell. The receptionist was nice, but the credit card machine went nuts, beeping continuously, so she had me try another one. Her comment that the reader had been malfunctioning of late wasn’t reassuring.

We were directed to park under the hotel, and that went fine, and we could tell we weren’t back home because multi-story underground garages in much of Oklahoma are a rarity given our high water tables. We found a bank of three elevators, but one was marked out of order, another as private, and the remaining one wouldn’t respond. A hotel worker emerged from a doorway, remarked that maybe a cleaning crew had jammed the elevator, and he took us up to our room on the private service elevator. Again, helpful workers, but another telltale sign of a hotel in trouble.

We got to our room on the sixth floor, with the sewer smell in the corridor thankfully not continuing on into the room. It had a living area with an aging rug, an attractive full kitchen, a bedroom, and a balcony. After stowing our luggage, I ventured out on the balcony in the cold and windy weather, admiring the view of the old courthouse to the east.

We tried to connect to the Wi-Fi, amused to see SSIDs from nearby apartments that had a distinctly collegiate flavor. We opted not to try connecting to ItStingsWhenIP, (*)(*), or SwampAss.

Wendy needed ice, but we found that the icemaker in the big stainless steel refrigerator was frozen. Then a search of the many cabinets and multiple drawers showed them to be devoid of anything save for a few plates and glasses. No cookware or utensils, rendering the kitchen quite useless. What in the world? Did the management just decide it wasn’t worth keeping their rooms up to snuff? Does the hotel only have its act together when the Jayhawks are playing at the big football stadium a block away or Rock Chalk, Jayhawk is echoing in the Allen Fieldhouse?

I took the ice bucket and went to look for an ice machine. A corridor sign said ice was only available on floors two and four. The two regular elevators were still out of service, so I presumed the worker’s guess that a cleaning crew was holding one up was wrong. I called the service elevator, only to find upon entering that it had no buttons for floors two or four. I guess it is just intended to service the lobby, kitchen, garage, and the supposedly fancy rooms on the top floors.

So I punched for the lobby and upon exiting the friendly receptionist was passing. I asked about ice, and she said she could get some for me in the kitchen. She took my bucket and soon reappeared with the ice, then headed back to the front desk. I turned to call the service elevator…and there was no call button for it in the lobby. There was no way to get to our room save climbing five flights of stairs.

I went to the front desk, explained the issue, and the receptionist said she would call the service elevator for me from the kitchen side, it having doors on one side for the lobby and on the other for the kitchen. That worked, but when I got back to floor six and made my way through the sewer smell to our room, my mind was made up.

I began searching for other Lawrence hotels, and the TownePlace Suites by Marriott beckoned. I booked a two-bedroom suite for less than half the price of our smaller king condo at The Oread. We packed up, took the service elevator to the garage, and never looked back.

I could have gone to the receptionist and canceled our reservation, demanding a refund. That would make perfect sense to many folks, but that’s just not for me. I’m at the point in my life where I value peace over confrontation, with three different blood pressure medications coursing through my hardening arteries. I’ve learned to just let it go when plans change too late for me to change a reservation or when a hotel turns out to be a dysfunctional mess. I make new arrangements and move on with minimal fuss, having already made the conscious and admittedly privileged choice to absorb a loss without stressing about it.

TownePlace Suites

We drove a few blocks to the TownePlace Suites by Marriott. We parked by the entry and walked into another lobby, but there were no smells and no malfunctioning technology. There was another underground garage, but also working elevators that whisked us up to a nice spacious suite strategically situated to prevent us from hearing any noises throughout our stay, save for routine housekeeping. We had an ice machine on our floor and a view down into a back courtyard.

The only flaw was that the Wi-Fi never recognized us when given our last name and room number. We could have contacted the front desk for a fix, but the cellular service for our iPhones was adequate enough for us to make do, using them as hotspots for our iPads.

A Mistake on Mass Street

It was time for dinner, and we were only a block from “Mass Street” with various options. I chose poorly on that cold, rainy night, however, leading us to the Fat Shack.

I’d seen online that they had simple fare like chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, and French fries. Easy enough, and we didn’t need anything elaborate after our nice lunch. What I did not realize, however, was that they throw everything you order into a bun and wrap it up tight.

That’s right…our meals came out as tightly wrapped sandwiches, and we were shocked to peel off the wrapping and discover our items all smashed together. If I had seen a photo of the Fat Bronco™ showing me it was a sandwich instead of a combination plate, I would have exited without ordering.

I dissected my sandwich, eating various ingredients, chuckling at the situation. Our meals were meant for Gen-Z college brats, not middle-aged Gen-X tourists. We picked away for awhile and then dumped the rest, venturing back out on quiet Mass Street to return to the hotel.

I felt good about the timing of our trip, having correctly surmised that Lawrence and Mass Street would be relatively serene, with most students already gone for Thanksgiving. It was quite easy to walk or drive anywhere, with few waits, and everyone we encountered was friendly and helpful and seemed grateful to have some customers.

Our trip was off to a mixed start, but the next day would bring a couple of splendid museums. You’ll be able to read about those in subsequent posts.

Jawhawkers Part 2: The Spencer >