Penny's Diner in Wellington

I was holding off on the restaurant review for Rachel, but as she is off to camp, you are stuck with me. We actually chose to go to Wellington largely because of Penny's Diner. It had good reviews on the internet and more importantly is open 24 hours, seven days a week. Since we had to go on a Sunday, we really struggled to find someone open. Penny's hours cater to the railroad workers, but we saw all kinds of folks in the place.

Penny's resembles Walt's Diner on Tyler Road in Wichita with its shiny, modular exterior. The inside was clean and bright with black and white tile and old timey ads liberally scattered across the walls. The menus are laminated and feature breakfast, sandwiches, hamburgers and typical diner fare, even a blue plate special. I ordered the "Hearty Breakfast" to refuel after my strenuous big one mile run: pancakes, hash browns, two strips of bacon and one egg over medium. Rachel, quite unexpectedly, decided against breakfast and ordered what turned out to be a fairly large hot dog and some tater tots. Dan opted for a chicken fried steak sandwich with a side of homemade potato chips. Our family looked like a cardiologist's new Porsche in the making.

Everybody was pretty happy with the food. Rachel was surprised at the size of the hot dog and praised the "fluffy bun" and her crispy tater tots. My breakfast was yummy, but then it's pretty hard to mess up pancakes (although I've seen it happen). The real show stopper though was Dan's chicken fried steak; ridiculously large (as they are wont to be) this thing was nevertheless, really light and crispy, not that sodden slab of greasy breaded meat that you sometime get.

This is one reason to run.

Dan's light little sandwich

Rachel's dramatic hot dog consumption

After the meal, we waddled out to check out a few more of the sights and sounds of Wellington. Lots of railroad history and current railroad activity, so my train fanatic husband approved of the town. Here are a few more pictures from the day. 

Railroad Museum

Wellington photos

Here are some more photos I took while we were in Woods Park in Wellington, Kansas. Forgot my camera card for the SLR today, so it's all "phonetography." (Word coined by Dan; all right reserved--lol!)

These old limestone street signs were lining the road in Woods Park.

Deer track

Rachel and Dan discuss a fossil she found.

This looks like the beginning of a hike, but not really. It only went back a few yards.

View from the end of "the trail."

Gnarly!

Shroom! It was pretty damp out there.

Pretty awesome to call your tiny pond a "bay," but oh so much better when it's Donut Bay!

Short, but sweet

Ah the parliament buildings, the botanical gardens, the stunning view from Mount Victoria.... what? Oh! We're not in New Zealand; we're in Wellington, Kansas.

Today's Eat & Run trip was a bit hurried and haphazard thanks to a lack of both money and time on the part of we bloggers. Still, we felt compelled to get something new on here before Rachel leaves for camp this week, so we quickly threw this outing together last night. And considering the spontaneous nature of this venture, I think it went pretty well. We went with Wellington because it was close and we didn't have much gas.

Happy, lazy me

Figuring out where to run was the difficult part. We searched Google Maps, mapmyrun and the Rails to Trails site and pretty much came up empty. I did learn that there is a proposed Rails to Trails 13 mile stretch from Wellington to Oxford. That should be pretty cool some day. Good half marathon practice. Anyway, Dan finally found a semi-promising looking park that he though might suit our purposes, so off we went with visions of diner food dancing in our heads. I decided I was going to order pancakes no matter what!

So after some really confusing directions from the gal at the gas station and an unfortunate jaunt in the wrong direction, we finally arrived at Woods Park. Sadly, this was to be a solitary run for me because Rachel injured her foot the night before at a sleepover. Also, there was no actual trail in the park, so I had to settle for running down a partially paved, but mostly gravel road which ran through the park. It was not a long road, so a mile run was all I could do at this location. The lazy part of me was pleased.

So I set off running to the sound of Eric Clapton changing the world. A mellow song for a chill run. And for what it was, it was a pretty nice run. Very green and shady under a mercifully partly cloudy sky. I keep noticing  lovely cypress trees, and I especially enjoyed the part where the road hugged the creek.

Cypress trees

We think this is Slate Creek

If it's a Gray expedition, there's gotta be a railroad connection

Dan had asked me if it would take me about 15 minutes, and Rachel snorted derisively. I told him to back it down to 10. They would meet me at the end of the road.

Most of the time the gravel was pretty fine but there were a few good ankle rolling sections of road.

So a quick little jog ensued and then we checked out the rest of the park. Dan and Rachel showed me the spillway they had found.

And then we went down a short path by the spillway for the world's shortest hike. Blogger seems to want me to stop adding photos on this post, so I'll put the other photos on a separate post. So it wasn't really much of a run, but the park was very green and pleasant. Looks like a great place to picnic or play Frisbee golf, so if you find yourself in Wellington (Kansas), check it out.

Rachel's Restaurant Review- A Purposeful Alliteration

The Bread Basket Review in Newton, KS

The Bread Basket buffet was nestled in an unassuming rectangular building in downtown Newton. Presentation-wise, it was nice enough. A front room held the register, the buffet table and a clear refrigerator that displayed an impressive variety of pies. This opened up into a spacious white dining room. What struck me about the dining room was that it was lined on all sides with framed art- landscapes and other beautiful scenes. Walking in, I happened to notice the portrait of an orange tiger near the entrance. It wasn't what I expected, looking at the plain exterior of the building.

The food itself I was pretty neutral about. As the name implies, The Bread Basket featured several types of homemade breads, which you could slice yourself at the front of the buffet table. They also had very good dinner rolls. Possibly the most delicious thing I ate on my first plate was the strawberry jam they had in a bowl. It didn't taste like anything you could scoop from a jar, it had a perfect consistency and was burdened with chunks of ripe strawberry. For dessert there was cobbler, both regular and sugar free. There was a soft serve machine, too, which was delightfully creamy. On a more negative note, most of what I ate just didn't stand out to me. For once, my parents share a common viewpoint with me.

While all in all The Bread Basket was kind of an unremarkable eatery, make no mistake- it was by no means bad. To my vast regret, we did not purchase pie, meaning that I cannot give a review of that particular aspect of the establishment. But if you're looking for a nice enough place to eat in Newton, you may want to give The Bread Basket a try. They have everything from mashed potatoes to fried chicken to salad to apple and cherry cobbler.
By Rachel, who is in fact a top-notch restaurant reviewer.

Scenes from the trail

The portion of our run just north of Newton was our favorite part.

Memorial Grove

I suspect there is a better way to handle photos, but here are some shots Dan took in Memorial Grove on the Bethel College campus. Our running trail went right past this pretty little spot. The sculpture is called "The Plainsman" by John Gaeddert

Running in Newton

Okay--preemptive apology. It'll take awhile to figure out the M.O. for this blog. Maybe it'll be like one of those cartoons where the person eventually finds her style and then at some point you go back to the first panels they drew and you're shocked at the rocky beginning. Or not. Anyway, on to Newton!

Dan, Rachel and I got an early start to try to beat the heat. Dan, whose navigation abilities greatly exceed my own, had figured out roughly where to go to find the beginning of the Sand Creek trail north of Newton. He dropped us off at an unlikely looking spot, just north of the Bethel College campus. Rachel and I started through some trees which eventually led to what looked like a bunch of people's back yards. It seemed a bit awkward running on this sidewalk through people's landscape and Rachel and I kind of giggled nervously about it. We passed a gentleman watering a pretty substantial vegetable garden who hailed us with "nice day for a run!" We felt a little less like oddball trespassers after that.

The sidewalk dipped back into a wooded area where we encountered a bunch of forks in our road. We took a wrong turn and had to double back. We were pretty much clueless as to where to go, but we tried to bear in the direction we thought the college was in and came out there eventually. Then, another wrong turn took us on an unnecessary loop around the campus. I told Rachel she could count this as her first official college visit. She was not amused, particularly since she had advised me to take the other (correct) way. Finally back on track, our paparazzi man, Dan, ambushed us on the trail. It was kind of fortunate, because he kept me from taking another incorrect path.

No more uncertain choices lay ahead after that. We ran past a cool section of land where native tallgrass was being studied and then past an open field where we finally saw another runner. At this point we had a fashion disagreement when Rachel said. "Hey, you're wearing gold hoop earrings. You like the earrings I have on? Oh wait, I'm not wearing any because I am sensible!" Eventually the path hugged Sand Creek on the way into Newton. Rachel and I agreed this was our favorite part of the run. The creek was lovely and the path sloped up and down gently. We saw several varieties of ducks, an egret and a Great Blue Heron. Rachel was quite taken with the old railroad bridge we ran under, exclaiming that it looked like something out of Thomas the Tank Engine. Soon the path led into town and we had a hungry moment running behind the local McDonalds before things got more residential.

Sand Creek runs through a quiet, shaded neighborhood and is intermittently lined with some cute fencing that is often supporting bright white and yellow clumps of honeysuckle. Lots of other flowers, both wild and planned, lined the route as well. The path was nice and flat here. We ran south until we reached a point where across a moderately busy street the trees disappeared and the sidewalk went towards an unpromising looking industrial area with oil tanks. We decided to cross the creek and run back up the parallel path on the west side. By now it was hot and I was sucking air pretty badly, but I still needed to run about two miles to meet my day's quota. Some whining may have occurred as the 13-year-old patiently encouraged and then later not so patiently chastised her mother.Unfortunately, the trees were a lot thinner and more removed from the path on this side, so we really got a chance to "enjoy" the sun. The path doesn't go as far north on this side, so we ended up crossing the creek again and did our final half mile down main street in downtown Newton.

So overall, this was a great place to run--scenic, often shady and flat. Rachel was impressed by the fact that we saw virtually no trash along the creek. The atmosphere was quiet too, except for the frequent sound of train whistles, but then Newton is a town known for its railroad history; in fact, their high school mascot is The Railroaders. All in all, we thought our first destination run went pretty well.

Here we are at a trail marker on the campus of Bethel College.