Did a little bit in Missouri today and a little bit in Kansas. It started out this morning on my run, as about 6 or 7 blocks west of where we are staying is the state line. As when I’m not running on trails, I’m running up and down streets, I was in and out of Missouri and into Kansas a few times. I realize this is not a big deal to the locals, but it was a bit of amusement for me. And every time I ran back into Missouri, I thought — I’m not in Kansas anymore.
We also took a real excursion further into Kansas to check out the University of Kansas in Lawrence, about a 45 minute drive from here. It was a lovely 77 degrees under cloudy skies, while we walked around campus. We definitely found some pros and cons with the campus, and it didn’t help that the visit started off on a down note.
I’ll start with our pans, cons, whatever you want to call them. First, we parked at the campus Visitor Center to pick up a map and perhaps get some insights on what to checkout. We were met with no reaction from the group of 3 “workers” who were having a lovely chat amongst themselves. The student was helping someone over the phone and finally turned her attention to Bob (I had wandered over to the brochure wall to try to find a resource.) after she was finished with her data entry on the computer. Bob got a map and was told to follow the walking map in the Visitor’s Guide across the room — the resource wall I had found. Just a simple acknowledgment of our presence would have been appreciated. I mean, it’s Bob Peck after all.
The “walking map” cannot have been designed by anyone intending to use it. The map itself was super tiny, then you had to look up the building initials on other pages of the magazine to understand where you were, and there was no start/finish point. We used the larger, one-page map that Bob had picked up to guide us on our walkabout.
The campus itself was fine, a number of older, not so interesting architecturally buildings, but some more attractive ones as well. We loved that much of the campus is up on a hill (Mount Oread), which allows for great views of the area. There is also a campanile with a carillon that plays on the hour and provides concerts on Sundays at 5. There were plenty of versions of the Jayhawks mascot to look at, and a sad little story about why the KU fans yell “Rock Chalk” at sporting events.
Peckish Travels 