Flyover Guys
Just a couple middle-aged midwestern fellas who are here to yap about pop culture and sports. Occasionally, we'll fly over some random, forgotten about topics from the past that we hold near and dear to our hearts.
Flyover Guys
Episode 27: Summer Travel & Hidden Gems
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Joel and Seth discuss their summer travels growing up and as parents. They also recommend some hidden gems. Thanks for listening.
Just uh getting everything kind of ready for my daughter's graduation party, and we're still kind of uh taking around the idea of going out. We have a uh this afternoon. So uh so we're still we're about at the end of that process. How about you?
SPEAKER_01Um now high school graduation, right? Yes. Okay, because I was like, Sydney can't be graduating yet, and I was freaking out because Grace is graduating here in a few weeks, and I'm like, we're not doing any party, so crap. But yeah, high school graduation, I get that. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, I just got a tech, I just got a text from her, my senior, that she works at the grocery store about a mile from our house. And uh She said she just texted me and said, I just had a 10-minute conversation with a guy. Do you know who Chipper Jones is? So he lives by.
SPEAKER_01Are you serious?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so she was chatting it up with him apparently. Didn't know what it is.
SPEAKER_01What's his actual name? Is it really Chipper? What's his real name?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. That's a good question. It's not Chipper. It was always Chipper on the baseball cards.
SPEAKER_01That's not a person's real name, Chipper. It's like oil can is not his real name. It's true.
SPEAKER_00My brother is my brother's name is Spike, but that's obviously his nickname since he was about two, and it's Matthew, is his real name. So I would have to look. Um, I know I have probably a couple of his baseball cards, um, but I don't know. It's a good question.
SPEAKER_01How many baseball players where it's like that, where it's like what is their actual name? Like Bo Jackson.
SPEAKER_00Vincent is his obviously Magic Johnson with Irvin.
SPEAKER_01Okay, his name's Larry Wayne Jones. Yeah, Chipper's better. Yeah. Larry Wayne Jones sounds like a serial killer. That's true. Okay. Chipper though. Well then again, Chipper. No, never mind. That could be dark too. It's like Fargo. Yeah. Okay. God, that's cool though. Chipper Jones. He's one of the, what would you say, top five best braids?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say Hank Aaron won. Hank Aaron number one. Um, I love Maddox.
SPEAKER_01Terry Pendleton. Greg Maddox has to be two.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Terry Pendleton, three. No, I'm kidding. I don't know. Um I assume you just go with the pitchers at that point. Or Dale Murphy.
SPEAKER_00Dale Murphy's beloved, but um, gosh, why am I blanking on the early guys for the Braves?
SPEAKER_01Um, Milwaukee became Atlanta in what, the 70s? Yeah. And so you don't have much. Really, you got Bob Horner and Dale Murphy. And then you have the 90s dominance of it has it would have to be Glavin and Smoltz and Hank Aaron and Maddox. It's like everybody's a pitcher. And then Chipper Jones, probably number five. Unless you're going like Milwaukee Braves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but uh, why am I blanking on a a big time pitcher for the Braves that was Al Ramowski in the 50s?
SPEAKER_01Um Warren Spawn?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Warren Spawn. Warren Spawn?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I'm just guessing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Spawn and like Eddie Matthews, those guys. So okay. Uh yeah. But Smoltz is a big guy. He still lives around here. John Smoltz does, so he's a biggie in the area. He and Chipper.
SPEAKER_01So Yeah, they're they're definitely 90s heavy with all-time grades. Um, well, are we ready to do this? Yep. I am. All right. All right, here we go. Uh welcome to the Flyover Guys, a show by two middle-aged Midwestern fellas who are just trying to figure out what was, what is, and what will be about aspects of American culture from our little plot of soil here in the heartland. So jump on board for this week's episode. It is time to go on summer vacation, or at least plan summer vacations. So um we're getting mid-April, so it seems like uh I I would assume plans already have had to have been made, but we'll hold off on that. Uh a lot, it seems like you have to plan summer vacations earlier and earlier now. Um we just thought this would be kind of fun in spring, you know. We're getting near the end of school, and you want to start thinking about traveling. If you're if you have that luxury in your life to be able to travel somewhere, um Seth and I appreciate this as truly a luxury in life to get to travel. So uh let's start with this. Let me ask you these because I had a bunch of questions I wanted to ask you about this. Um where did you go when you grew up? Where did your parents take you guys?
SPEAKER_00So when we grew up, my my parents ran the town newspaper. I've mentioned that a f a few times. If you know us, uh you know that my dad was a newspaper guy. So uh every Wednesday we had to take the paper to the print shop to get printed. Uh so when you have those, and my dad was the editor, and he basically he and my mom basically just ran this with a few people that he would have helped write. And um, but when you're kind of on those time constraints, you really can't travel a lot or at least extended time because uh you had to do that weekly obligation of getting the paper out to a small town. So when we traveled, and to be honest with you, a lot of times when we traveled, it was summer, it it all evolved around summer baseball and softball trips with my siblings and I. So and that helped and that worked out well with the newspaper business because they were usually on weekends and they were typically around drivable distances in the Midwest. So heavy on the Kansas Cities, the Oklahoma Cities, the St. Louis's, Topeka. We would travel quite a bit, and then we all played on really good teams. Um, now speaking for my my siblings were a lot better than I was at baseball and softball ground because they actually played like my oldest brother and sister played college softball and baseball. That's right. Um, and my other brother Ben was a little better than I was, he was better than I was overall. Um but all of our teams were good. I played on a really good team as well. And so we would Were you right fielder? Uh I played third base. Hey, that's that's a respectable position. Um back up. You too.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say if you told me you played right field, this the story was gonna get sad.
SPEAKER_00No, I played outfield, uh, but if we ever played doubleheaders, I would be like the second, the third baseman for the second game. Uh but we made it to the Nationals and twice to Omaha in a place called Aurelia, Iowa. But Spike, my oldest brother, we went to New Mexico, uh, Farmington, New Mexico. My sister made it to the Nationals, and it was in Atlanta, so occasionally we would sprinkle in some farther trips for baseball and softball. Uh, but mainly it was that, and it was just driving. We didn't fly. Uh, my mom is not keen on flying, uh, so I didn't fly until I was a sophomore in high school, and we went on a trip to like San Diego, and then the following year we went out to DC. But that was the first time I ever flew. So we were not a flying family, so that also when you have a week-long time period and you don't fly, your options are really limited.
SPEAKER_01So who took over the paper when you like didn't have to be a little bit more than a little bit?
SPEAKER_00No, we never we never let it go longer than a week.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So we had to make it fit. So what on these road trips? Do you do you have like a favorite memory of what you did on the road trips?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there was one trip that we went on that was not baseball softball related, and that was to see uh my dad's friends up in Portland, Oregon. So we actually drove and we had a VW van, a yellow van that to this is, I mean, this was like my dad wrote about this trip. It is very famous or infamous within our family, but uh during the trip, we to start our van, we had to push start it. We kind of like what you always see in like a movie or something, where yeah, to get it started, you gotta push it and then hit the clutch and start it. It's like karate kids type stuff, like a little bit of sunshine. So, yeah, so we would have to park on an elevated spot to where it would be easier to push. We'd like just kind of push it down the hill and hop in the start it. Yeah, so we had to do that the whole time. So we had to really think about when are we gonna stop and you know, we're gonna have to push started and it had to be strategic, yeah. And then on the way back, my mom, when we were at the beach, she my mom is a she loves nature and she and she got a starfish, which you don't find starfish in Kansas. So her she had a big idea of bringing the starfish back home with us. Well, it was alive when we got it, so then it dies on the way home, and it does not starfish do not smell very good. Uh so that thing stunk the whole time. So we had to like roll the windows down, and it was like a hundred degrees, and it was just a bad no air conditioning in the VW van. No, and okay, and I'm you know, this is long-winded, but uh the very first night we didn't this was back in the day where we didn't stay in hotels, we would stop at a KOA campground.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's right. I remember you telling me this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, park our van and camp. So we made it to Colorado, and we were in the mountains at a campground, and I was out, I got altitude sickness, and I was one of the privileged ones that got to actually sleep in the van. And I could lay across the back seat because I was small, I was six, and everybody else was kind of, we took sleeping bags, we didn't have tents or anything, we just unrolled sleeping bags and laid outside. Um, you know, there's bears and everything, but I got I got sick and I sat up in the middle of the night and vomited over the back seat. But here's the thing we had just started this trip, and we used to buy our food and take it with us. So we had paper sack, grocery sacks of food in the back, and I vomited in all of them. All the sacks were open, and so that was to start the trip. So I ruined all our food vomit and oh my gosh, and push starting the van.
SPEAKER_01Push starting the van. And that was the last road trip to the room. Yeah, that's why we didn't go on very many trips. Oh my gosh. Um, and I would assume that trip you and your brothers were all too young to drive. Well, you were driven to drive. Was Spike too young to drive? Yeah, yeah, he was too young. Did your mom and dad both drive or just your dad?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's that's the thing, is my mom. Um we were all asleep. It was one trip. We actually made two trips out to that area, but it might have been when we were older. My dad drove most of the time because he didn't he just didn't feel comfortable sitting anywhere else but the driver's seat. And but there was one trip where we let my mom drive, and we were out in the Dakotas, and it was like no literally like no speed limit. Yeah, I don't think that I don't think they had a speed limit. And we woke up and my mom was driving, and we swear she was going like 95 on, and she swears she was only going 70, but yeah, it was mainly my dad would drive on those trips. Yeah. What about you guys? Did you travel?
SPEAKER_01We we not much. My dad was a minister, um, so I know he got a little time off, but our trips were almost always, it feels like, to Cape Girado, Missouri. That's where my mom's parents lived. And I I remember some of the same uh now we would do that in a day. I think back then I felt like it took nine or ten hours today. It doesn't take quite that long, but uh I remember just kind of crawling over the seats, you know. Seat belts weren't really a thing. Um, I don't remember wearing seat belts as a kid. Um, I always remember leaning over and watching my dad drive and being like, I'm gonna keep out for things in case he misses. I'm here, I'm his backup. And so it's like I would never go to sleep where my sister would sleep the whole trip, and it annoyed me to no end. And I just had to have my eyes glued on the road. So you could probably tell by age five I was a type A control freak personality. Um, but yeah, we would do a we would do uh usually I I don't know if it was a full week, but we would do you know, maybe five days in Cape Girardeau, and usually it was after my baseball season, um, which meant it would have been in July. And I just remember that you get out in southern Missouri. Uh, for those people who don't know, Cape Girardo is right on the Mississippi, it's about an hour and a half south of St. Louis, you'd get out and you would just have that sweltering heat and humidity punch you in the face, and then the sound of cicadas everywhere, and the smell of my grandpa's garage, which was basically just a tool shed and his garden next to it. And you know, it's just such a powerful image to or smells almost when I smell like gasoline rags or or fried fish or something with gar a fresh garden, it like takes me back to Cape Girado in the mid-1980s, and that was it. I mean, I think we we would take one day and we'd go up to St. Louis and we'd watch the Cardinals play.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and that would be fun. Say because to go to St. Louis was to go to a big city, uh, to go to Union Station and always want to get some fudge, uh St. Louis fudge, and then hit a Cardinals game, and then we'd go back down to Cape Girado, and then that would be it. And that was kind of usually it felt like the end of the summer, and then when we got back, you had to get ready for school. Um, and so yeah, I those were pretty typical. I I mean I I know we would have maybe gone out to like Hayes, Kansas to visit some cousins, but um uh there was something there there was something comforting though about it, because that's usually we only saw our grandparents twice a year, and that would have been one of the times, and it was just neat to go out there and and just have that time and it and for me it was exciting, and there were neighbors of theirs that we would play with. I think Eric and Cassidy might have been their names. And there was a neighbor named Mr. Williams, who was an old time who always treated me really well. He's kind of mean to my sister, if I remember right, but it just he was always really nice and bought us like chocolate shakes and things. Um, but it was just, you know, the I I can't say that uh uh it was anywhere really exotic when you say Cape Girarde of Missouri, but um there's something about we went back in 2014 to bury my grandmother. Um that's the last time we've been back, and you know, uh we go to the old house and and and that we also were there in July. What's interesting is we were also there in late July, so you could kind of hear the cicadas, feel the humidity, go down to the river, Mississippi River, and I mean that's where the Mississippi River's pretty powerful in southern Missouri. So um, yeah, that that was kind of ours. Um so very different from what happened with our our I suspect both of our families and our kids.
SPEAKER_00My uh my my both sets of my grandparents both lived within a mile and a half of where we lived, so we never had to travel to see family. Um I had a I had one uncle that lived in Houston down in Corpus Christi. That's the only family member out of like I did have another uncle that lived in Oklahoma for a while, but then he moved back. But really, we didn't have to travel to go see family, so that and since we were small town people and our family all lived there, we really didn't travel that often.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I I figured this would be kind of a fun one just to sit and talk about because I I feel like you and I have similar experiences growing up uh with that, although you roughing it in a car and bat uh and sleeping bags probably going next level, which is fantastic. But I also know that then we've been able to take our kids to more places, uh just to different places, and and so that was the next one I kind of wanted to ask you is what are some of the favorite spots you've been able to take your family now that you're dad?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, my wife was kind of similar to me. She didn't travel very often when she was growing up. In fact, they went on one trip every year, and it was to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the national uh there's a fly-in because her dad's pile, her families are pilots, and they'd go up there to the fly-in every summer. And in fact, they still go, and we've been, we went a couple times, and my daughter, my middle daughter, goes with them every year still. Um, so she didn't travel very often, and when she did, it was always that same place every summer. So when we got married, uh we both like to travel. So we decided that we weren't gonna be, we were gonna offer our kids a little different experience traveling than we had, um, since we didn't ever really go to an exotic place. I'm not saying that we missed out or anything. Um but uh we do we we typically I guess if you could uh categorize our trips, our family trips now. Um our kids like to go to the beach, so we go to beaches a lot. Um they like Disney. I never went to Disney growing up, and we've probably been five or six times, so I guess that's kind of in a in a bucket itself. And then we like national parks. My kids don't like to go to cities, so we travel to a lot of national and state parks.
SPEAKER_01Um okay, so let's let's hear about your what what's a favorite national park then that you've been to?
SPEAKER_00Um well just last year the we went to the Moab and Zion down in Utah. So we went there, they love that. Bryce Canyon, all of that stuff. So um we like that. Um when we lived in Kansas, we used to go out to the Rocky Mountains quite a bit. So like Keystone and and Denver, we like that area. Um the Smoky Mountains are great around here. That's right. And and like the Appalachian Mountains, much better than the Rocky Mountains, because they're as far as the Earth's formation goes, they're a lot older mountain range. So so the uh when I vomited in my back of the van with altitude, you don't I don't get sick. We don't have altitude sickness out here in the Appalachians, which is much better than the Rocky Mountains with that high elevation.
SPEAKER_01So So what what's what makes it different? I mean you just an older mountain. Is it just the Rockies are higher?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they haven't been worn down, they haven't they haven't been eroded over time, so they're much they're much older, sharper, and and the Appalachians are more slopy, lower elevation just over time. I'm gonna I only know prairie, so I need to learn this stuff. Yeah, so and then but as far as like you know, we go to Florida, either the kind of the A30 corridor and the panhandle on the the Gulf side, or we'll go over to Charleston or um Hilton Head or whatever on that side for beaches. Um yeah, and California, we don't it's harder to travel cross country now, uh, but San Diego is a great spot. We've been there a few times. Our kids like that area. Um and then of course we've lived in Chicago, so wherever we've lived, we have kind of used that as a jumping off point to sure. So um, so we were up on the I Lake Michigan, great, great place. It it it even feels like an ocean. Um, so what about you guys?
SPEAKER_01Um I I'm gonna just stay contained to when the kids were younger. And I feel like the two most common places we went were Colorado. Uh we went to Estes Park a lot, um, and then Minnesota. My wife's Minnesotan, so we would take the drive up there, and I bet I have driven to Minnesota at least 50 times, and that's not hyperbole. I would say at least 50 times because I know in 2030. We had gone up just a dozen times. That was due to sickness. Right. Um, but I mean, just in one year, 12 times. And we would typically drive up a couple times a year, and so we and we still go every year. And I I do, I love Minnesota. I think our kids have a little bit of transplant in Minnesota in them. That's courtesy of their mom. Um, so every the Twin Cities are fantastic, and then um going up even further north, I would say Duluth is a wonderful place. And um, when I first got together with my wife when we were first dating, um I went up and watched her run Grandma's Marathon up there along the north shore of Lake Superior, and that was in June, early June, I think, or no, late June, late June. And uh, so I would say Colorado and Minnesota, um, as they were a little older. I mean, we've gone to other places, but I think those were more consistent. Um, we did do the big drive of driving up to the Badlands over to Devil's Tower to Yellowstone and to the Grand Tetons. Um, and that was great. Uh that was a great trip. Because normally I I I can't say we go west that much other than Colorado. But uh we've tried to mix it up with them. Um I I would say definitely compared to like I said, I mean you said this earlier. I don't feel like either one of us were deprived as kids, you know, like going on road trips to cat uh to Cape Girado. I don't feel like I was deprived.
SPEAKER_00I didn't have friends that traveled a lot. I didn't know any different, to be honest with you. Since all of our family lived there, we were just like, that's our life uh in the Midwest. Small town, you'd kind of travel here and there for what you needed to uh for sports or activities or little bit of work travel from my dad. He would go to some conferences and and stuff like that for newspaper conventions and stuff, but uh we didn't ever hop on planes and fly off to exotic places, but uh yeah, that was just kind of the way it was. And if you don't know any different, then that was what it just felt normal.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so let me ask you, are we a mo more are we a more mobile people today, or is this just a product of our unique circumstances of getting to do this? Are Americans mobile?
SPEAKER_00I think you and I, our families travel more than a lot more than the average typical American family. Yeah, I think we're pretty spoiled. Because I know a lot of people who don't travel often at all. Um and it it's very expensive to travel. You have to I mean you have to have money, especially with gas prices and and kind of inflation in the last couple years or whatever. It is expensive. And some people do every other summer, and uh, but typically we'll go on one trip and then we'll go back. If we're not living in Kansas, we'll go back to Kansas during the summer. So it's usually like two trips and then like Christmas and stuff.
SPEAKER_01So okay, so that leads my next question, and and I'm gonna break it into two parts. So uh hidden gems. Uh since we're Midwestern, let's break this into two hidden gems in the Midwest, okay, and then secondly, just hidden gems in the state of Kansas. Okay. So what would you say traveling a hidden gym in the Midwest? I've got a few, but I'll maybe uh think about it. How many do you have? Do you just have a hidden gym or how many do you got?
SPEAKER_00I have a f I have a few. Um it's hard to like categorize the Midwest, uh, depending on who you are and where you live and what you consider the Midwest. But um I'm gonna be a little liberal in my definition of the Midwest, but we're fun with it. Go ahead. So we talked about Colorado, but um a lot of people don't make it all the way out to Crested Butte, Colorado.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I love that place. That's a fun uh area. And uh we went there and we we've never been snow skiing as a fan. No, no, yeah, we haven't. I personally have never been snow skiing. I would rather hike and do s I would I love the mountains, but I'd much rather go when there's not um snow. I just I'm not one that has great balance anyway. So and uh what makes crested butte a hidden gem. Well, it's kind of so it's kind of down contained in this general area in the mountains. Um it like you get there and it's all it's it's basically like uh it's an isolated place that everything is just kind of right there. So it's all these neat restaurants and shops and and I haven't been during ski season, but it it's kind of one of those year-round cities where it has its own life in the in the winter year, in the winter time and in the summer. But I don't know, I was just kind of captivated by it. I have a really good friend Greg who's his in-laws had a cabin there, and they go out there all the time, and he had told me about it. I never got to go with him during any spring break or any uh ski trips, but uh we went our as a family, we took our kids out there and we loved it. So I just think that's a hidden gem from what I've always heard through Greg. And then as we finally visited it, uh it's just cool to its own little place um that's all unique, I felt like so.
SPEAKER_01I remember that was I think my sister in high school went on a ski trip and she came back wearing a crested butte sweatshirt and like a typical middle school or junior high kid. I'm like, well, it's a crusted, crusty butt shoe. What's a crusty butt? But that that's always my memory, is that was the first time I think my sister went away on a trip. I'm like, man, that looks so cool that she got to go to Colorado. That seems so exotic because I might have gone at that point, but I bet I hadn't been to Colorado. I mean, I doubt it. So that's a good one. Yeah, crested beauty's a good one. I still haven't been there, but so it's definitely hidden. What about you? Okay, I'm gonna take I I'm almost reluctant to say it because I don't want anybody to go here, and that's the appeal of it. Is but then again, you really gotta work to get to it. Um, and like I said, I'm really stretching the boundaries of the Midwest. I said Duluth earlier in Duluth, Minnesota, so that's at the southern tip of Lake Superior. We will take Highway 61, shout out Bob Dylan, an hour and a half north, and go to a cabin on Lake Superior in Lutsen, and there's nothing there. And you can do a 20-minute drive and get to a little town Grand Moray. And what's great is it's just there's not a lot there other than Grand Mray has, you know, maybe three to four blocks of shopping, but it's all right there on the water. It's it's picturesque, it's rarely crowded. Although sometimes I guess we've been there we we're we tend to be there around Memorial Weekend, and it it can be a little crowded, but I think the appeal, and this is something I uh this is my kids' Cape Girado, if that makes sense. We tend to leave the day after school ends and drive up and get to Lutzen and stay there for like five days and just be on a cabin and walk. And so it's maybe 60 degrees, and you're right next to the water, and they have and it feels kind of like the old cabins of the 1960s and 70s. Um got a charcoal grill outside, wood-burning fireplace, really spare. Um uh in other words, there's no real, it's nothing fancy, and that's what we like about it is hey, everybody decompressed for five days from the school year. Let's just enjoy the quiet, the solitude. You know, sometimes I'll go play golf. Um, I I rarely golf anymore, but they have a they have a golf course where we've seen uh a moose and a bear and elk, and it it's it's just it's great to be away from the world. And so that's what I like about a hidden gym is almost nobody's there. And so don't go anybody. Please don't go to Luzon. Uh but otherwise, yeah. That that's that's one. All right.
SPEAKER_00So I have I have a question. Is if another spot that I have written down it Montana. Is Montana a Midwest, or is that north?
SPEAKER_01I mean well, it's you're pushing as much as I am with I'm Grand Moray's 50 miles from the Canadian border, so you know, we're pushing the envelope a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Because I you have kind of the Pacific Northwest and you have the wet southwest. Uh button. Wouldn't we just say Montana's the West West? Yeah, but I have a place in Montana. All right. Um yeah, this was a family vacation that I went to when I was in middle school. Uh, but we went up to visit one of my dad's friend friends in a place called Whitefish, Montana. And it was on Flathead Lake, and it was a great small town, but it was almost like uh it had people from all around. Um like George Seafort had a cabin there. Um Mary, who who was the Mary, what's her face on Entertainment Tonight, the host? Oh, Mary. Glas was it Glass? There were there were like Hollywood, uh sports, entertainment.
SPEAKER_01Marathon Ford got something up there, I felt like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so there were there were big names. The guy was rattling off names, and and I knew some and I didn't know some, but uh great place. I think it's like the deepest freshwater lake in the United States or something like that, Flathead Lake is. And we went on a little fishing excursion. He had a cabin, it's in the in the mountains, and there were bears, you know, getting into his garbage at night. And being in Kansas, just I mean, that was really the first encounter I had with bears. With it, like right now, there's a bear outside. You could see him, you know, pull the blinds down, and it's just like, what is happening? There's a bear out there, you know. Mary Hart. Is it Mary Hart? Mary Hart, yes. Okay, just I don't know. Like, yeah, Mary Hart. It was just Mary Hart. Random people like that. Uh the old the old Seafert, the old 49ers coach, and you know, just just some random people. Um, I loved it. It was a great place. It was just like what you said. Um now, it these were nice the places that people had these multi-million dollar cabins or whatever, but yeah, um, it was just good to get away. And I had never heard of it growing up, and I'd never been to Montana before either. But I was like, what's in Montana? Someone from Kansas saying, What's in Montana? Uh we don't have much room to talk. But we got there and I was like, this place is it was different, it felt different than Colorado. That's all I knew at the time. So I was like, this is cool. Uh so that's a hidden gym that I have, but it's probably not Midwest.
SPEAKER_01But okay, would you count Door County as a hidden gym or not?
SPEAKER_00Yes, you need to talk about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's tricky because again, we're pushing the boundaries of the Midwest here. If you go north of Green Bay past Sturgeon Bay, that's the other one my wife's family introduced us to that we tried to take the kid. I bet we've been at least a half dozen times with the kids. Um, once you get north of Sturgeon Bay, uh, you have Green Bay on one side and Lake Michigan on the other, and you just have a series of small towns where there's no um franchises. And so everything's just local, which is very um, I don't know, they have supper clubs there, you know what I mean? How great's that? It's like you go back to 19, yeah, you go back to 1955, and so you have uh what Egg Harbor, um white Fish Creek, Ephraim. I know I'm forgetting other ones. Um I feel like we normally would stay in Egg Harbor and or just get a cabin or a house. And God, what am I forgetting? Oh, Sister Bay, duh. Sister Bay, and then you can go even a little bit further north. Um and and so it's about every five to ten miles, there's a little town. And now I will say it's really gotten uh more known, I guess we could say. A lot of people from Chicago go up there now. Um, but it's still worth it. Like we go, we we would try to go late July, that's cherry picking season, so everything's about picking cherries, and um my wife would take our daughters out and do that. And but yeah, I mean you could out you can get out on the water, you can go into town to little shops, everything's ice cream related, and you know, and now they're starting to get more kind of hip little breweries and things. Um, so I don't know, it's just one of those things where it feels like you're going back in time a little bit, and I would say that ranks as maybe my all-time favorite movie going experience when we were there, I think it was 2023, and we went all and saw Barbie at the drive-in. And so we all dressed up in pink and purple, and that place was packed, and it overlooks um I think Lake Michigan, I might be saying that wrong, but it overlooks body of water, and so it's picturesque, and you have like the 1960s, let's all go to the movie stuff, and everybody was friendly and talking and beforehand, and you had pets out there, and it was just kind of one of those things that you and I have talked enough about loving that sense of community or communal experiences, and that that for me was just one of the all-time greats. And so I hope to keep go back to Door County even more later, except I do worry that it is getting more and more crowded, so you gotta make the reservation earlier now. Yeah, but yeah, that that would be my other hidden gem, which is not so hidden anymore. What about Kansas?
SPEAKER_00Kansas, that's a little tougher than Midwest, I think, if you really narrow it down. Um, but I will tell you one. This I uh maybe have a couple that I would I thought of.
SPEAKER_01It's gonna be bad if we duplicate.
SPEAKER_00This one has a soft spot in my heart because we had a cabin here for a while, but Council Grove, Kansas was one of my favorite spots, I guess, locations. And and if you're not familiar, it there's a little there's they have two little lakes, and one of them you can buy cabins on, and and it's small, so you couldn't really do a ton of stuff on there, and it was kind of uh you had to live on the lake or know somebody to go to go there. Uh it you couldn't just show up for an afternoon and go out and boat and ski and all that stuff. Uh so it was in the Flint Hills, which we've talked about numerous times on here, but uh, and it was kind of on the it it had uh in the town itself, it was a very historic town. It had uh original trading posts on like the Chisholm Trail and stuff like that. Uh the Hayes House was uh a restaurant that is very historic as far as you know, it's been around for uh for over a hundred years, you know. I I don't know exactly at this point. Uh but we would eat breakfast there, and it's they have all the old photographs as far back as they could go um of what it used to look like in the town itself, just a western trading post kind of on your way out to the west coast and still still operates. I mean, there's obviously high school and kids and modern businesses now, they have Sonics and Dairy Queens and stuff like that, but they do have a small town vibe. And if you know anything about small towns in Kansas, it it just feels like uh even though we owned a cabin and we didn't really live there as our main residence, you felt like part of the community just because they were so welcoming. And um a lot of people from I grew up in Valley Center, and there were probably three or four people just from Valley Center that had cabins there. It was about an hour and a half drive, so it was like the perfect getaway to go there for a day or a weekend. Yeah, it was perfect, and it was on the way to Manhattan, and so if you're K State Wildcat fans, you could go up there and stay and go to the football games and do all that. And it was it was great. I loved it.
SPEAKER_01So okay, that's a really good one, actually. I would say mine is Lindsburg, um, Little Sweden. Uh, this is a town that was founded, I think, in the 1860s, right before Wichita was incorporated. Um, immigrants coming uh via Scandinavia through Chicago. Um they still have uh the town still has very much a Swedish, I mean that the downtown has so many shops that are that are Swedish. They have the the Swedish Lutheran College, Bethany there, so shout out to Lutherans, let's go. Um their choir performs the Messiah every year. It's like kind of a renowned. And if I remember right, I feel like in the 70s or the early 80s, might have been the 70s, the king of Sweden visited and stopped by. And so it's an it's just over an hour from Wichita. Um, but it's one of those things like if you were to go to a I think they have a midsummer festival in the longest day in June. Um, and so it's just one of those things that gives you that sense of all the Kansas is much more eclectic with immigrants than I think sometimes we get a reputation for. Uh that we have all sorts of different groups who have shown up um here. And so I just think that's kind of cool that people who aren't from Kansas say if you're just wanting to see something really unique, it's kind of like you wouldn't think in Texas the amount of German in Texas, like you hear of New Braunfels, Texas. Um, that's what I think with Lindsburg, Kansas, is just that we have little Scandinavia, right? Kind of smacking the heart in the smoky, what what is it, the smoky valley region? Yeah, the smoky valley region near near McF near McPherson. So I would always say if people wanted to discover something just for a wonderful day trip, I think I think uh I would I would mine would be Lindsburg.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that whole corridor there, uh like 135, the the Newtons, the Hestons, the Hillsboroughs, the um Lindsburgs, a lot of Europeans came with their wheat. And that's where a lot of farmers, a lot of farming communities popped up. And and with the railroad and Newton, uh, there's a lot of the immigrants that brought their heritage with them, whether it's German, uh bakery, you could still go to Newton and eat in these old restaurants that still have uh all the the breads and stuff, the pies and everything that they make. Um Lindsburg.
SPEAKER_01What is it? What's the one in Yoder? Carriage Crossing, is that still there? For the Amish? Yeah, Mennonite community. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What what are the the little wooden signs in Lindsburg called the like starts with a D, like Doc, Doc, uh Cameron Crossing? Yeah, they all have those little, they have the whole community really feels like it's little Sweden, that vibe that you get. And I remember going to Coronado Heights for a field trip out there by Lindsburg as well. So anytime you go through that town, you can definitely tell that it it has a very uh different culture that they all Dallahorse signs? Yeah, Dallahorse.
SPEAKER_01Dalla horse. Sorry, I I looked this one up real quick. I didn't know this one. I was gonna say Dr. Dallahorse.
SPEAKER_00Dalla, that's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the Dallahorse, that's right. Yeah, beautiful colored uh little, usually two foot wooden horses.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a lot of families will put their names on it. It's kind of like uh or or like little businesses and stuff. They have those hanging out, kind of like your mailbox type thing.
SPEAKER_01But well, let's do uh let's do a short little game. Uh we Midwesterners tend to be terse on some things. So how about this? Touring American cities. You've been to a lot of cities, I've been to some cities. So I'll ask for a one-sentence review of a city. Do the best you can. We'll go back and forth. We'll just choose random cities that we think we've been to. We have not rehearsed this if you're listening to the city. This could be bad. This could be bad.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have no idea what everybody else. Yeah, I do have some blind spots. So if I haven't, if you say a city, I I may not know.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm gonna start with an obvious. I'm gonna start with an obvious because you live I'm gonna live there. Uh Chicago.
SPEAKER_00Underrated city. Uh a very vibrant, a lot of entertainment. Um I think this is a it's not a hidden gym because it's a third largest city. But it it is a to me, a lot of people haven't been there that I know. Uh so if you do want to Yeah, I know a lot of people that have never been there. Um But what I would say is uh just maybe it was because it was the first Big city I lived in, but there was always something to do. And yeah, and with major airports, if you live in a city with major airports, you get a lot of a lot of sports and entertainment and stuff that come through there. But I don't know. Always something to find, you know, a lot of different types of ethnic foods and diversity as well.
SPEAKER_01So see, you're turning into a southerner now. The game was one sentence. Okay. You're a southerner droning on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's a southerner has that colloquialism of just being able to talk and talk and talk.
SPEAKER_00I forgot the rule.
SPEAKER_01That's my but it's because you're because you live there. I I I kind of set you up to fail on that one. Sorry. No, I'm messing with you. I'm just kidding. All right. You give me a city. We'll see if I've been to it.
SPEAKER_00Boston.
SPEAKER_01Never been. Oh no, I've driven through it. Okay. On my way out, which sounds terrible. I've only flown in. So it I'm gonna just say Boston.
SPEAKER_00Let me let me give you a different one. Okay. Because I know you've been there. New York City.
SPEAKER_01New York City weirdly feels like a whole bunch of little cities. That's my review. I feel like Lower East Side, Chelsea, Upper East Side, Greenwich Village, Soho. All of a sudden each one's a different one. So if you've never been to New York, it weirdly feels like a huge city that's actually just a bunch of little cities. Okay. That's my review.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and if you if you like sci-fi, there's a book called The City We Became. Yeah, but it's like sci-fi and stuff. I don't think you like it. But it it's all about the boroughs of New York City. And it was a neat, it it really accentuated the differences of the people that live there and just how how different they they and distinct they all feel. Okay, what do you got?
SPEAKER_01Denver.
SPEAKER_00Denver Denver is the city. No, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_01I'm trying to make a high joke.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The the mile high city before you get to the mountains that again, it has everything. I'll stop it there, but I know that you and I went out there for a like a teaching convention. Oh my gosh, that's right. Remember when we went out there and we even drove to Estes Park, didn't we? Yeah. It was great. They they have a very mobile city where you can, not mobile, but you can move around very easily in their public transportation. It's all kind of centered right there in one area. Um I I've thoroughly enjoy that downtown area because of the accessibility. Uh if you hop on the little train or whatever trolley track that they have. Uh I I like it. Um, it's not I don't know if I would ever live there because it's very down.
SPEAKER_01But we should have come up with like a ranking of her, like a one to ten on how likely would you want to visit versus live there. Should have done that. That's all right. Uh all right, next city.
SPEAKER_00What about what about DC?
SPEAKER_01DC. Um since I'm there as a tourist, I I think the easy answer is it's it feels so much more open and vibrant. When you go to the East Coast, I think we anticipate everything to be really crushed in together, um uh dense with population, but since I'm doing the touristy thing, um when you're down by the mall in that area, m Arlington, it's just more wide open. And it's I I find it to be I find it to be uh just beautiful. Uh I mean Georgetown, I spent time at Georgetown, I really like that. Um but you I do feel like you have to have an interest in in our past. Right. Um like if you're going outside of the district, you're just getting to what looks like any other city. I mean, uh yeah, I don't I think there's nothing distinctive about that.
SPEAKER_00So it's really if you're just trying to it it's one of those cities that if you go on a in a specific if you go in the spring when the cherry blossoms are blooming, it's one of the coolest spots in America, I think, just because you can walk down, like you said, the National Mall and and just around that area where yes, you're a tourist, but it's also it has its own beauty. Some of the the statues and the memorials, uh whether it's at night, just I remember just walking around in the evening um and just thinking, even through the Georgetown area, I've been through there at night. It's beautiful, it's all lit up. Um and you can walk it or you can get on the metro and ride around uh anywhere you want, really. It's very accessible. Uh, and then you pop out and you see everything, whether it's in the day or or the evening. I like it better at night because you don't see everything. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love this. It just reminded me, I I had such a sentimental moment because we were there on the 4th of July with our kids on the mall for the fireworks show, and you kind of just lay, you know, set up camp where you want to be on the mall with a blanket and all that, and we were over by a patch of trees, and I remember our kids ran off into this patch of trees with another group of kids, and it was just such a sentimental thing being in DC that the kids they were playing with were African American and like Asian American, and they were all trying to catch fireflies together, and it's like this perfect summer evening, and I'm just sitting there waxing poetic, going, isn't this what our country's supposed to be? Just people from different because they were from the southeast, they were, I think they were down near Georgia, and it's like this is awesome. It's just different groups of people, we're all here together, kind of celebrating this. And that's the nerd history teacher in me moment where I'm like, I'm so glad my kids got that moment of just hanging out and catching fireflies on the National Mall on the 4th of July at night. So yeah. Um, okay, I can't wait to hear what you say for this one. I've saved this one because we're about we're probably about done with this game. Because I know you've been to this city because I've been there with you. New Orleans.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. What are they saying?
SPEAKER_01We came up with three words for it, by the way.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00It's one of the yeah. It is eye-opening experience. It it has it's it's extreme. Yeah. It's one of the most beautiful cities, and then if you stay up late enough or early enough, it's one of the most disgusting, foul smelling. It's it is it it turns it it's a city that turns. It it's like it ripens and then it sours and starts to decay. Uh but it's a neat city. It it is. I mean, there are there are there are wonderful restaurants, there's great places to live like Restoration Hall to listen to Preservation Hall.
SPEAKER_01That's right, that's right. Preservation Hall.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the music, uh, the food, the the drink, the the river, and and then, you know, you of course you have And then then you have the all the exotic places.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. I just remember we walked out of there going, urine, vomit, garbage. That's the trifecta smell.
SPEAKER_00When you wake up at like you're walking the streets at seven in the morning from the previous night, and you're just like, oh eating beignets and drinking chicory in your coffee or whatever it was. Uh I will say my favorite thing to do was on Bourbon Street was see how many people would stumble into the horse poop that was dropped by the uh sheriff patrol. The horses in the middle of the street, they would all have a pile of poop that they would go, and people that were drunk would just be walking around, women in nice fancy shoes, and just not look down and just walk right through it. I loved it. It was like, I don't know, Super Mario or something.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. All right. Well, that that's good. We could put we could go on and on with cities. I was just curious, some um initial thoughts of random American cities. Um, last question, and then we probably better wrap it up. Um, where are you going this summer?
SPEAKER_00All right, so when our kids graduate, we always tell them we can we'd take them on a trip. And Sid, we kind of use Sid's that trip to Europe where we went with you guys. Um that was kind of her senior trip. So this summer, our other daughter, Kelsey's, she wants to go to Costa Rica, so we'll go down there. Oh, all right. So we're gonna spend some time in the rainforest and then a little time on the beach. So is Alex already planning his? He's not, yeah, he's not going. Uh it's just uh my wife and my daughter. Alex wants to go to Alaska. Of course, that's probably gonna change five times, but that's okay. That's a good pick. I that's actually a pretty good pick, though, if he sticks with that. Yeah. He's not a big city, he doesn't, he hates cities. So does my daughter, Kelsey. But what about you guys?
SPEAKER_01Well, ironically, we are going to Cape Girado. We're gonna take my parents and uh show my children where I grew up and went, and we kind of think this will probably be our last time we all go together as family. So we'll meet up with my sister and her family. We will spend a day or two in Cape Girado, go to St. Louis, get tickets for a ball game in St. Louis, and then that'll be our one little trip. And then Amy and I will take just a trip ourselves um to Montreal and Quebec City. I'm just gonna go there. I I just we just said let's just go, um, because the kids are gonna have to work all summer, so we're gonna just try this out, and I'm super excited. Oh man. Um, so I'll have to report back on that.
SPEAKER_00But otherwise report back because I always get travel advice from you, and we tend to go to places that you always recommend. So I can't wait to hear back about that. And I I've never been to Vancouver, but uh just Canada in general.
SPEAKER_01I'd like to go to you would love Vancouver, everything's outdoor walking, biking. Yeah, you would love it in particular. I mean, I we liked it, but we were only there a brief time uh before we drove up to Whistler. But I thought I'd told you that that is such a U-town, um, Vancouver. It's clean, people are friendly, you you can get out of the city super easy and just go to all places to go hike and bike and walk. It's yeah, it's a great city. Awesome. Well, this cable.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully, people have read and yeah, appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01So all right, everybody. Well, thanks for tuning in and we hope to catch up with you soon. See you guys. Thank you. Take care.