Frugal family on the road - day 3

We spent the morning at the b&b, having a wonderful breakfast prepared by our host, Sabra, and walking around the property and dressing up in the old clothes (DK2) and all the rest. At about 10 we left and drove the 15 minutes to Topeka's Gage Park Zoo. There we spent a lovely couple of hours looking at all the different kinds of animals there, with our special favorites being the apes and the hippos. They have an indoor rainforest with all kids of lovely birds walking around relatively free (beautiful plumage, in't it, squire?). We also are fans of lemurs because of Zoboomafoo and I like flamingos because I associate them with my grandparents (of blessed memory) in Florida.

We spent another half hour or so playing at the playground there, then we had another picnic (cheese and bread for the little ones, leftover chinese food for us, total cost $0) and we also threw down for two rides on the historic carousel they have there in the park.

Then we got in the car and drove over to the State Capitol, which is something DK1 had wanted to do. It's under pretty heavy repair right now, but we went in and took a look at the murals on the first and second floors, which recreate incidents in Kansas history. The most remarkable on is by John Steuart Curry, it represents the Bloody Kansas period and in the foreground is a larger-than-life John Brown, Bible in one hand and rifle in the other, looking pretty darn crazy.
I asked the guide who was there, who explained the murals to us, if it is fair to say that Kansas is proud of Brown. She said as much blood as he shed, it's impossible to say "proud," exactly.

(parenthetically: We happened to see the teardown of a press conference for Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, we liked that because she's a Democrat. Turn Kansas Blue, that's what I say.)

This whole thing was pretty boring for the little kids although there was an elevator with an elevator operator which they found quite amusing. We walked around the block to look at a couple of statues on the Capitol grounds but then we got in the car and drove back to Wichita. The thing about going all day like we did all three of these days is that you really can't keep it up for long. We have downtime at home but I didn't want any on the road but it does wear one out.

Total cost of the day: a tank of gas, $65. Entry to the zoo, $17 (a popular price). $6 for the carousel. A couple of ice coffees for the ride home, $4. Total cost of the trip, let's see, it took us about a tank and a quarter altogether, so $80 in gas, $170 for accommodations, about $120 for food, about $46 for attractions. So about $425 altogether, plus or minus.

Now of course we're broke as broke can be until payday. But we had a good time!

Frugal family on the road - day 2

We (rather, I) had originally intended to spend the morning in Lawrence and the afternoon in Topeka on day 2, but we liked Lawrence so much we decided to spend the whole day there, in part because we wanted to go to the pool that was closed yesterday and in part because we were sure the food options were going to be better in Lawrence than in Topeka.

So bright and early (well, 9-ish) we checked out of the hotel. And get this - because the treadmill didn't work, and because the front desk clerk didn't know thing 1 about the town, and because ... well, I don't know what else, I'll have to ask DW, but she complained to the manager about a bunch of things and they ended up comping us the room! So we thought about staying another night there, but that was quickly vetoed because she hated the place. (Baymont Suites, but any other place of that ilk probably wouldn't have been any better.) So she said, you know how you always spend a little extra money to find an interesting place? Keep doing that. Yes, ma'am.

We went to Clinton Lake - a man-made lake outside of Lawrence with a lot of trails and bikepaths and marinas and picnic areas and such. We found a little trail and off we went, for about an hour hike. I took the little ones back and DW and DK1 came back separately. The weather was about 10 degrees cooler than the previous day and the day was clear so it was really beautiful. Then the DKs played for a while on a playground right there, and we had another picnic, but it wasn't so cheap this time because we hadn't brought it from home this time but bought it at a health food store that morning - cheese, bread, a couple of salads, almost $30! Maybe we should go back to PB&J.

After that we drove back downtown and swam at the pool for a couple of hours. (It cost $17 to get in, 4 each for us, 3 each for the kids.) I was throwing DK3 into this waterfall thing they had an he kept coming up and saying, Again! And the girls went down the slides, it was all a lot of fun, a great way to spend the afternoon.

For dinner we went for Chinese food - we can get tofu and rice for DKs 2 and 3 and the rest of us had veggie entrees which were far more numerous and interesting than anything you can get in Wichita. (Veggie General Tso's chicken, etc.) About $45.

So get this - because we hadn't paid for the hotel room the night before, I called a bed and breakfast I had seen listed in a couple of the tour books. It's called the Old Stone House, it's a 1850s era stone house just on the Lawrence side of Topeka and the books all said, "We cater to vegetarians." I called the guy and said, listen, we're here now, he was fine with it. $85 per night per room, we booked 2.

The place has a lot of antiques and antique-looking decorations and DW was a little worried that the kids were going to break something but they were great. They did find a little trunk filled with old-timey clothing that fit them perfectly - they were so cute! It kept them quite busy. In the meantime I talked to the innkeeper, Alan, about politics and Kansas history - I think I need to find a book about Bloody Kansas, which I don't know much about. The rooms were comfortable, the landscape was beautiful, it was convenient, breakfast was much better than anything you would get in the White Flour Motel and the price was competitive compared with the Motel as well. So a good choice there.

So we passed a pleasant evening. Cost for the day - lunch $30, dinner $45, swimming $17, B&B $170.

Frugal family on the road - day 1

Well, we're back from our sojourn to northeast Kansas. To recap, we talked about various vacation plans, but decided that the better part of financial valor would be a short trip to a nearby destination. And since we're new in Kansas, we figured we'd take a look around here some.

I took a week off of work. On Monday we stayed in Wichita, going to Botanica, the local botanical gardens, with some senior friends from the community. We've always belonged to arboretums (arboreti?) wherever we've lived, but this was the first time we'd here. It was a lovely place, but the weather was darn hot, so we started early and didn't stay as long as we might have otherwise.

Tuesday we drove to Lawrence. This is a town I've always heard a lot about, partially because of it's proximity to KC, and partially because many of the Jewish kids from here go to KU (there is no appreciable Jewish population at any of the other Kansas universities, including WSU). We drove straight to the campus, which was quiet for the last week before the students start coming back (and before football practice gets underway).

We started off with a picnic near the Kansas Union building; we brought food from home, and I have a wonderful picnic basket that my mom bought for my birthday a couple of years ago, so we don't have to use plastic silverware and paper plates, and it all fits into a backpack. Then we went to the KU Natural History Museum, a four floor museum with a good, young-kid-friendly exhibit on bugs, and one DK1 (the almost 10 year old) liked about evolution which was quite interesting and comprehensible. (We could learn that humans didn't evolve from apes, but rather that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.) There was also a long hallway of fossils, particularly those found in Kansas. There were some live snakes and live fish, although the rest of the museum was rather heavy on the taxidermy, for my taste, including a ton of birds and a horse that was the sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand. The place had a suggested donation, but we're members of a science museum here so it's a cross-membership, so we gave a little money but not as much as suggested.

By this time it was after 3 in the afternoon, so we went to check into the hotel. I usually try to find interesting or unique places to stay, as evidenced by our sojourn in Westport a couple of weeks ago, but this time I was determined to spend the least amount possible, so I booked us a room in a hotel on the highway, a place where you would expect football fans would stay when they come in for games. It had a pool and a gym, and that's usually enough for DW.

In the travel literature we found a municipal pool that seemed interesting and fun, and as it was still in the high 90s we decided to spend some time there, only to get there to find that it was closed for the day for routine maintenance. So we played at the playground for a little while and then DW took the kids back to the hotel for a little while in the pool, and I walked around Massachusetts Street (the main drag) for an hour or so. (My wife is nice to me that way.)

I wasn't planning on buying anything (famous last words) but one of the men's shops - the only men's shop, in fact, which carried clothing suitable for anyone over 22 - had an amazing sale (30% off their final markdowns) and I ended up buying a couple of summer shirts and a couple of fall/winter blazers for $70 each. I had worn my late blazers to the nub, to the point where DW was embarrassed to see me out in public in them, and believe me, it's a good price. (By comparison, Dillards has a sale this weekend, and the cheapest men's blazer is $150). So that was good, except I used the credit card.

Then we went for dinner, to a local place called in fact Local Burger that serves sustainable, grass fed, locally produced hamburgers (beef, bison and elk) mostly. Local, sustainable and grassfed is usually kosher enough for me, but I was determined to go out for ice cream after so I didn't want to eat meat, and of course DW is a vegetarian, and the DKs mostly are, so she and I had veggie burgers and the kids had grilled cheese, except for DK1 who had a tuna salad that didn't fill her up so she ordered a grilled cheese too. Looking back, we probably should have gone here on a night when we didn't want ice cream, because the burgers looked good and DK3 will eat a hot dog now and again. So a bit of a missed opportunity there. About $35 for dinner, so it's not cheap, but sustainable food rarely is, as I never tire of pointing out.

Then we went out for Ben & Jerry's, and back to the hotel, where the evening passed about as well as you would expect with 5 people (including three children under the age of 10) in a single hotel room.

Cost for the day: a tank of gas, the makings for the picnic lunch (maybe $10), the dinner - and the clothes, but that's a different category.

Between vacations

We're back from our trip to Kansas City. (I wrote about it previously here.) My father in law's bar mitzvah was great, we saw all of DW's brothers and cousins and at the dinner on Saturday night everyone sat around the table and told stories about how they all escaped the Nazis to get to the US. I heard more details about this than I ever had and I have to tell you, if you have any "greatest generation" types in your family, get a camcorder and a mic from radio shack, put them in front of a black background and make them answer all the questions you can think of!

The whole grandparents/Branson thing went off reasonably well (we don't ask too many questions) and as for us, the hotel in Westport was great, we were able to see the bands we wanted and it was fun to be urban again and walk out the door for lunch or whatever. It wasn't a very frugal week because we ate out all the time (Indian food, mideast food, some overpriced fish'n'chips at a new place down by the new arena). About the most frugal thing we did was go to the KC City Hall and go to the 28th floor overview to see a really beautiful 360-degree panorama view of the city. We made a bet between ourselves that no one we know would have ever been up there before, and we have yet to be proven wrong.

Oh, we also went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, that's the main art museum in town, it's free to get in although we slipped them a couple of bucks. We looked at the contemporary art in the new Block building and then we got a couple of the free electronic guide thingies and took an architectural tour of the space. It was DW's mom's suggestion and it was well worth it. Neither of us knows a whole lot about architecture so we saw a lot that we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Now we're planning our next trip, the staycation. I gave DK1 two tour books and asked her to find a couple of places of interest in each of Lawrence, Topeka and Hutchinson. I think we'll have an outing in Wichita on Monday, Lawrence Tuesday and Wednesday (hotel), Topeka Thursday then Hutchinson Friday and home. We may add various stops along the way. We'll try to limit eating out to dinner only by bringing cereal, bread, pb'n'j, cheese, fruit.

Well, I have something else to write about but it's time to put the kids to bed so it'll have to wait.

Our summer staycation

We're trying to finalize our vacation plans for this summer. Originally we thought about driving to Philadelphia to see old friends from seminary, but with the price of gas the way it is we shelved that idea pretty quick. Then I was lobbying for a trip to Santa Fe, which is a place I've always wanted to see, it's about a 10-hour drive, and I'm feeling pretty hippie-deprived here in the buckle of the Bible Belt. This idea also seems to be fading, partially because of the price of gas but also, and probably more so, because we'd have to stay in a hotel there and it would probably be around $700 just for that. (And before you ask - DW doesn't do camping.)

My 3 faithful readers (well 2, if you don't count the person I share a checking account with) know that we've been stuggling to get our heads above water financially. Due to the largesse of the government we've been able to put about $2000 into a savings account. DW has been consistently saying that to go on a trip that would cost just about that whole amount seems irresponsible, and she's right, I'm afraid.

So we're going on two smaller trips. The first is to KC, hometown of DW, for my father-in-law's 2d bar mitzvah. (Explanation: The Bible says we're allotted "three score and 10" years on earth; so at 70 we start counting again, and at 83 there's another bar mitzvah! I bet the gifts include fewer savings bonds, though.) My folks are coming to that, and (get this) they are taking the 3 DKs to Branson for 3 whole days afterward. (God bless them!) So DW and I are staying in KC sans kids for 3 whole days. (Three times longer than our honeymoon, but that's a another story.) We're seeing friends, including a friend of ours who's a singer and has a gig on one of those nights with a band we've never seen. We'll hit at least one of the museums, have a picnic if the weather is nice, and I'm hoping to see the Royals once while we're there.

The question now is, where do we stay? We could stay for free at her parents' house, but it's not (how to say this delicately) the most romantic setting. She won't ask her friends if we can stay with them - I would, but it's not my call. There's a hotel in the Westport section that looks interesting, "KC's first green hotel," and the only thing you have to do is say to me is that something is green and I'm there! $111/night on sale at Expedia. I reckon we can do 1, possibly 2 nights there.

Then we have another week, first week in August, which is when we were going to go to Santa Fe. Now it looks like we're going to do something that's been getting a lot of press lately with all the economic problems - a "staycation." I'm determined not to fall into my tendency to just shlep around the house all day. We're looking in the local travel books to find places that are interesting and within 2 or 3 hours of the house. We'll probably go up to Lawrence, maybe even overnight - we've always heard good things about that town, and KU won't be in session yet. There's the farm where we get some of our eggs and chicken in Hutchinson, we'll probably go up there for look-around. Newton is supposedly an interesting town, they have a 10,000 Villages store. And we have memberships to the Zoo, the botanical gardens, and the children's museum that we don't use enough. I'd like to do a hike in the Flint Hills, if it's not 110 degrees, or maybe rent a boat in El Dorado. And that should fill up a week.

It's disappointing a bit not to be going to Santa Fe - there's a certain adventure aspect that will be missing. I'm hoping that if we move fast enough and fill the week with interesting things it will be something we'll look back on with fond memories. And it won't completely kill my meager savings. And that, in these days and in our circumstances, has to be the best part of all.