April 20, 2010 On The Road (Part 1)

We left Concordia, KS on April 17 and drove north to I-80.  Bob is so relieved as he doesn’t think there will be any quilt shops on the interstate.  I love to travel the state highways and smaller roads while Bob likes the interstates so I have to thank him for indulging me.

  We did go through Hebron, KS before getting to the interstate.  Hebron is home to the world’s largest porch swing.  This swing will seat 32 feet long and will seat 32 small children or 16 adults. It was a cute little city park and Hebron also had…are you ready? can you guess?  You got it…a quilt shop!  They were participating in a thingy (can’t remember what you call them) where quilters go from one shop to another all over the state of Kansas.  I think there were a little over 30 shops involved.  I talked to several ladies that were traveling together and they said they would make about 20 of the shops over a 2 day period. 

We stopped just off of I-80 at Henderson, KS to spend 2 nights at Prairie Oasis RV park, a Passport America park.  The rig next to us has gotten there shortly before we did.  As is customary with most RVers we introduced ourselves to Bob and Jill Wolf from Cody, Wyoming…can you believe it…their home is in Cody…our destination for the summer.  After we all got set up and the laundry started, we joined them in their beautiful coach for a beverage.  What delightful people they are.  Jill and Bob are headed to Tennessee for a wedding but we look forward to seeing them again in Cody.

Sunday we did not leave the rig…we never even detached the car from the coach.  It was just a very relaxing day and we had Wi-Fi and satellite TV.

Monday we were off to North Platte, NE.  We decided to overnight at the Walmart Bed and Breakfast.  I’m a happy camper!  I went in to pick up a couple of things and asked the cashier about a restaurant near the parking lot called Runza.  She said they served runzas…well, what the heck is a runza????  She looked at me as if I had just landed from outer space!  She started to explain what a runza is…you take homemade bread…Stop, you don’t need to go any further!  And she said they had the best homemade onion rings she had ever tasted.  Well, I could hardly wait to get back to the rig and grab Bob and make the short walk, to our first RUNZA (can’t you just hear hot rods revving their engines).  So here you go: According to Wikipedia, a runza (also called a bierock) is a yeast dough bread pocket with a filling consisting of beef, cabbage or sauerkraut, onions, and seasonings. They are baked in various shapes such as a half-moon, rectangle, round (bun), square, or triangle. In Nebraska, the runza is usually baked in a rectangular shape. The bierocks of Kansas, on the other hand, are generally baked in the shape of a bun. (These were baked in a rectangular shape.)

Bob ordered the, I guess, “original” runza that had cheese and I ordered one with mushrooms and Swiss cheese and we both had the “best I have ever eaten onion rings”.  I can now scratch eating a runza off of my bucket list.  It was not bad, but I should have not ordered the mushrooms…they were canned.  I ate half of my sandwich but it did not go to waste…guess who finished it off.  The onion rings may be the worst we have ever had.  They had absolutely no taste.  If someone had cut them into pieces and fed them to me with my eyes closed I could not have told you what I was eating and Bob was in agreement.  It was back to the rig for a movie from the Red Box in Walmart. Nighty, night.

Moving on.