Emporia Itself

Emporia is a really cute little town. I never thought I could live in a small town, but I could live in Emporia. While it is small, there are just over 27,000 people and a student population of over 5,000 at Emporia State University. Plus with the University there, there is a lot of diversity in the population as well as food :)

Anyway, below are pics from their main street. Definitely Main Street USA:

Now here are some pics of the culture of Emporia/Kansas, Drinking friends: people complain about the Utah Liquor laws and we noticed in Kansas, you can only get liquor from liquor stores. These are however, privately owned, see below, even more ghetto than state liquor stores:

This is the place of the famous Emporia Farmer's market. I didn't want to offend anyone so I had to take the pic afterwards. I was all excited to go, but it consists of a bunch of old people parking their cars and putting out 6ft tables of odds and ends that they have made or grown in their garden. No young people in site.

Fun Fact with the mural below, Emporia was actually the first town that began celebrating Veteran's Day that is now a national holiday.

Below is a mug from the Commercial Street Diner. It is an awesome little diner on Main Street. Fantastic greesy spoon. I love their slogan too, which unfortunately, I couldn't capture on this mug "Home Cookin' So Good, You'll Think We Stole Yo' Mama!" hee hee.

And this is Bobby D's. AMAZING BBQ. We went at around 5:30pm on Saturday and it was already packed with locals. About 6pm Bobby himself was walking around checking on everyone. Plus Kansas is super cheap. Chris and I stuffed ourselves with appetizers, main dish, drinks, tons of left over food and the bill was less than $30!

Kansas Trip Part 2

We arrived in Emporia at 9pm Thursday May 6th after a very long drive, but especially the last two hours on small state roads feeling like we were in the middle of no where. It was amazing and so nice to arrive to this:

The closest Hilton property to Emporia is 50 miles away in Topeka. After looking online to figure out where to stay, I found the White Rose Inn Bed and Breakfast. We had the honeymoon suite, which was huge with a kitchenette. The inn is for sale so they are no longer serving breakfast, this dropped the price to only $89/night. It was more expensive at the Fairfield Inn! Plus, it was right downtown so we were able to park the car and walk everywhere the whole time.

Kansas Trip

Even though Chris "walked" in January for his second masters degree, he still had 2 classes left to take since he started the program a little late. Because of this, he had to go to Emporia, Kansas to present his capstone to the professors to officially finish. Emporia is a town of 26,000 people and is located between Wichita and Topeka. After pricing buying a plane ticket to Kansas City, then renting a car and staying in a hotel for 4 days, we quickly realized it would be a lot cheaper for us to drive out there. My sister and brother in law were kind enough to trade cars with us for the extended weekend so that we'd also save a lot on gas driving their Ford Focus and not our SUV. This was such a great help, we are so thankful!

We left Wednesday night after work and drove into Rock Springs, WY where there is a Homewood Suites. Man, am I also grateful for my Hilton discount! The Homewood there is really nice, I think it might be just newer than the one I am at. The next morning, Chris and I got up at a horribly early time and hit the rode. I've been to a lot of places around the United States, but I've never driven through wyoming, colorado and kansas. I learned a lot. Like, you could really entertain yourself driving through wyoming by counting the signs to Little Americas outside of Rock Springs and in Cheyenne. I didn't though. I also enjoy the landscape WAY better than the landscape of Eastern Colorado and I actually enjoy driving through Kansas out of the three. Case in point:

(Eastern Colorado)

(Wyoming)(Kansas)

Chris and I also realized that we will NEVER live in Wyoming. It was May 6th and it was 28 degrees with high winds and snow. Within 5 hours we went from the horrible cold of wyoming to 70 degrees outside of Denver. Craziness. I also learned how much I hate driving on I-80 with all the truckers. I can't even tell you how many times we were cut off. I am amazed I didn't have a heart attack.


Once we entered Kansas, we quickly discovered that we should have been counting the Jesus/Church billboards. This was quite entertaining. We counted on the way home and there are 33 signs between Topeka and Goodland Kansas. 36 if you count the signs we saw from Emporia to Topeka on the little state highway. This was disappointing because I promise you we saw a lot more driving into the bible belt than leaving it. Below is a picture of my personal favorite:

And this leads me to some questions. How is this a wise investment in their marketing campaign? Does anyone ever walk into a strange church in a strange state/town and say, "Hey so I was driving along I-70 and it just hit me. I want to start going to your church."? Or say, "I was driving along I-70 and that lit billboard made me realize I need to believe in Jesus. " I'm just curious about this marketing idea...

No Words Yet...

Now at peace: Gram, Mary Poulson 5.11.2010

(Thanksgiving 2008)