Greensburg looks better and better each time we drive through. It was devastated by a tornado a few years ago but lots of rebuilding going on. Places to visit include the Green Bean Coffee Co. and Studio Stained Glass and More on Main Street. There’s also a business incubator next door that is producing something called sun chips.
We’re in Dodge City – cold, snowy and sun very very bright.
Filed under Uncategorized
Greensburg looks better and better each time we drive through. It was devastated by a tornado a few years ago but lots of rebuilding going on. Places to visit include the Green Bean Coffee Co. and Studio Stained Glass and More on Main Street. There’s also a business incubator next door that is producing something called sun chips.
We’re in Dodge City – cold, snowy and sun very very bright.
Filed under Uncategorized
Longmont police respond to three separate weather-related accidents as snow falls on Colo. Hwy. 66 at Francis Street in Longmont, Colo., Dec. 19, 2001. (AP/Longmont Times-Call)(AP)
WICHITA, Kan. – Fierce winds and snow that caused fatal road accidents and shuttered highways in five states, crawled deeper into the Great Plains early Tuesday, with forecasters warning that pre-holiday travel would be difficult if not impossible across the region.
Hotels were filling up quickly along major roadways from eastern New Mexico to Kansas, and nearly 100 rescue calls came in from motorists in the Texas Panhandle as blizzard conditions forced closed part of Interstate 40, a major east-west route, Monday night.
About 10 inches of snow had fallen in western Kansas before dawn Tuesday and several more inches along with strong wind gusts were expected, National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Russell said.
“We’re talking about whiteout conditions,” he said.
Heather Haltli, 29, and her husband were traveling from their home at Hill Air Force Base in Utah to attend a family funeral in Abilene, Texas, but the storm slowed them down so badly that they had to take refuge at the Comfort Inn in Garden City, Kan.
“We’ve been traveling about 20 miles per hour all the way from Denver,” Haltli said Tuesday. She said they had passed up to 15 wrecks including rollovers, upside down cars and jackknifed trucks as they drove through Colorado.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to make the funeral, but we’ll keep going,” she said.
Colorado Highway Patrol trooper Nate Reid said the freezing rain and fog came in so fast on Monday that it caught a lot of drivers unaware.
“I can’t even count how many rollovers we had,” Reid said.
Snowpack and icy conditions forced the closure of roadways across western and southwestern Kansas, including a western section of the I-70, the main thoroughfare that traverses the state.
“Southwest Kansas is pretty much shut down completely,” Derek Latham, a dispatcher for the Kansas Highway Patrol in Salina said early Tuesday. “I have one trooper who almost went into a ditch this morning, and he came across four other cars that went into a ditch. That was just this morning.”
The storm was blamed for at least six deaths Monday, authorities said. Four people were killed when their vehicle collided with a pickup truck in part of eastern New Mexico where blizzard-like conditions are rare, and a prison guard and inmate died when a prison van crashed along an icy roadway in eastern Colorado.
The late-autumn snowstorm lumbered into the region Monday, turning roads to ice and reducing visibility to zero. The conditions put state road crews on alert and had motorists taking refuge and early exits off major roads across the region.
In northern New Mexico, snow and ice shuttered all roads from Raton to the Texas and Oklahoma borders about 90 miles away. Hotels in Clayton, N.M., just east of where the three states touch, were nearly full. Multiple highways remained closed early Tuesday.
Linda Pape, general manager of the Clayton Super 8 motel said it was packed with unhappy skiers who had been headed to lodges in Colorado and elsewhere in New Mexico.
“They lost a day or two of skiing, and they had budgeted an amount of money they were going to spend, and now they have to spend more staying somewhere else,” she said.
Pape said it’s not uncommon for skiers to get stuck in Clayton during the winter, and she keeps two freezers and a refrigerator stocked in case roads are closed.
“They are not happy, but we are not letting them go hungry,” she said.
The storm came after much of the country had a relatively mild fall. With the exception of the October snowstorm blamed for 29 deaths on the East Coast, there’s been little rain or snow. Many of the areas hit Monday enjoyed relatively balmy 60-degree temperatures just 24 hours earlier.
Snowfall tapered off early Tuesday in the Oklahoma Panhandle, although the weather service warned of blowing snow and single digit temperatures later after dark. Up to a foot of snow fell in Boise City, Okla.
On Monday, mail carrier Vicki Roberts said she could no longer see the nearby 4,973-foot-tall Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma, from the window of her home in Kenton.
“I have a mail route and I’m not going,” Roberts said. “You just don’t get out in this. We’ll be socked in here. If we lose power, we’ll just read a book in front of the fireplace.”
Travel throughout the region was difficult. New Mexico shut down a portion of Interstate 25, the major route heading northeast of Santa Fe into Colorado, and Clayton police dispatcher Cindy Blackwell said her phones were “ringing off the hook” with calls from numerous motorists stuck on rural roads.
Filed under Kansas misc
The New Yorks Times 36 Hours America is too thick to lug to Hawaii so I’m jotting down a few places to check out that are mentioned in the guide’s Honolulu piece:
– Nico’s at the waterfront for fresh fish and live blues/Hawaiian music. Try the grilled ahi sandwich, fish and chiops or beef stew (beef stew?). Good place to go after visiting Shangri La, the Doris Duke estate, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
– Maunakea Street – Asian neighborhood with arts scene – ARTS at Marks Garage, 1159 Nuuanu Ave; Louis Pohl Gallery (111 Nuuanu Ave), Pegge Hopper Gallery (1164 Nuuanu Ave.)
– Little Village Noodle House, 1113 Smith Street.
– Snorkeling at tiny San Souci BEach in front of Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel.
Filed under Hawaii
As someone who grew up in suburban Detroit, I’m used to watching the place where I live be maligned. Not to mention as someone who later lived in Wichita, Kansas and, most recently, in Des Moines, Iowa. I have also lived in Boston and New York so I am very familiar with the coastal view of the Midwest, as immortalized in the famous 1976 Saul Steinberg map of the world for The New Yorker.
So Stephen Bloom’s obnoxious stereotyping pf Iowa and Iowans, especially small town rural Iowa, in a recent Atlantic online piece didn’t strike me as anything new – especially since he wrote something similar (for the LA TIMES?) soon after he first arrived in Iowa City some twenty years ago. But his latest attack has raised a stink here, especially as the Iowa presidential caucuses approach. One of the best defenses of Iowa/Des Moines comes from my old friend Jane Burns. see: http://sneezingthrough.blogspot.com/
Filed under Des Moines
Here’s a story I wrote that ran in the travel section of the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune last weekend. For the record, I didn’t sleep with (Frank Lloyd) Wright (I’m not that kind of girl…or writer. And he is no longer with us…) but I did enjoy visiting the hotel.
In Mason City, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Historic Park Inn gets a multimillion-dollar face-lift.
La Chiesa in downtown Spencer, Iowa is a new Italian restaurant in an old Episcopal church, so you can eat pasta and pizza in a former sanctuary, complete with stained glass windows, arched wood beams and a big cross. So says Family Living, an Iowa Farm Bureau publication (that, full disclosure, my husband edits.) The fare is Italian country – more roasted pork with handmade fettucini and”Pork Belly and Apples Two Ways” than “That’s a spicy meatball.” No hot dogs that I know of. (Just threw that in to test my theory that people are more inclined to read blog posts that mention hotdogs…)
The Cheese Shop is such a nice addition to my local neighborhood strip mall – The Shops of Roosevelt in Des Moines. I finally visited yesterday after driving by it’s fogged-up glass windows for days, vaguely seeing people gathered at tables and around the cheese counter. Struck me as a particularly warm place to come in from the cold – and so it is.
I sat at the wooden bar (salvaged from a local architectural salvage shop) by the cheese counter with a friend, sipping a small glass of amber-colored cider (the kind with alcohol) and nibbling on a plate of artisanal cheeses, including a delicious Vermont cheddar (although not the delicious Vermont cheddar we ate in Grafton, Vt. when we were there in September), hearty bread from La Mie (a few doors down in the center) and fancy olive oil.
Yes the cheese is pricey (some are $27 a pound) and next time I will try to sit at one of the three or four tables rather than the counter (better for carrying on a private conversation) but this place is a keeper. I hope it continues to find customers and does well.
Good also to see The Shops filling in after a period when several businesses left. Never good to have empty store fronts. And there’s a fun mix at the moment that sort of reminds me of an old town square with the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. You can visit “The Cheese Shop,” “The Soap Shop” and “The Juice Company.” (Reminds me of Tucson’s fondness for one-syllable, to-the-point shop names like “Sauce,” a pizza place, which is next to “Frost,” an ice cream shop.) Plus you can get baked goods/a meal (at La Mie), a haircut, upscale second-hand clothes, one-of-a-kind handmade jewelry, not to mention do a little yoga and, if need be, get some body-cracking from a chiropractor.
Fun Fact according to the DMRegister: One of the cheese shop owners is the son of the guy who opened the original Timbuktuu Coffee Shop in the same strip (where La Mie is now.)
Filed under Des Moines
Hot dog lovers are clearly a blog-reading bunch, judging from the reception to my hot dog-related post yesterday. I happened to stumble upon a post from another blogger about hot dogs – this time Hot Dogs in Honolulu, where we’ll be in – (who’s counting) – less than four weeks. I’m not really sure I want to eat hot dogs when we’re in Hawaii – given other more interesting options – but here’s the scoop just in case YOU do.
– Hank’s Haute Dogs in Honolulu (cute name!) more creative concoctions include: (very spicy) Alligator Andouille hotdogs, Lobster Fat boy (homemade lobster sausage wrapped in bacon), Rabbit & Veal sausage hot dogs, Hawaiian hotdogs (with pineapple relish, passion fruit mustard, sweet Maui onions – ick); Buffalo hotdogs (made with brown ale and chipotle – hmm), duck & foyers hotdogs, even – occasionally, rumor has it, Reindeer sausage hotdogs. (Isn’t there some law against that?).
Eat these, I’m told, with fab onion rings and Ginger Soda (any relation to ginger ale?). The main Hank’s is at 324 Coral Street. There’s a second location at Waikiki’s International Marketplace.
Filed under Hawaii
About a year ago, I found myself in a long line of people stretching down the block from a small brick building that is home to Chicago’s renowned (apparently) hot dog haven…Hot Doug’s (aka “the Encased Meats Emporium and Sausage Superstore.”) After waiting about 20 minutes on a chilly afternoon and hearing that the wait might be over an hour longer, we left and went to a very good Cuban restaurant nearby.
I’m hoping the wait won’t be as long but the dogs will be as good at Capital Pub & Hot Dog Co., just south of the East Village in Des Moines. From the outside, the place looks like an old roadhouse that matches its gritty industrial neighborhood that is slowly slowly gentrifying. The pub – located in a 19th century building originally built for Irish immigrants working on the railroad, the Des Moines Register reports – is selling 100 percent beef dogs (also turkey and vegan dogs) in 13 guises. They’re thick (maybe like my favorite dogs – kosher hot dogs?) – and cooked to order (whatever that means with a hot dog – surely people don’t eat “medium rare dogs”).
One favorite is the Chicago Dog (natch), which sports yellow stuff (mustard, onion), diced tomato sweet relish, sport peppers, pickles and celery. The Mobayashi dog sounds way weird – tempura battered and fried, dressed with spicy mayo, cream cheese, cucumber and, of course, wasabi. I may have to go for the non-hot dog sandwich – the Southside Link, made from locally-made (Graziano’s) Italian sausage with giardiniera pepper relish (which I first ate at a street fair in Chicago, yum) and cheeses.
Filed under Chicago, Des Moines, Uncategorized
TakeBetsywithyou
TakeBetsywithyou 