Garden City nights

Cousin Eddie welcomes travelers to Coolidge, Kansas

I roared out of Colorado on Black Friday, eager to erase a blacker Thanksgiving. No turkey, no company, no nothing but a good bottle of wine that I didn't want to drink alone. And a good bottle of wine without someone to share the wine never tastes as sublime. 

So I headed out along the Arkansas Valley drive, U.S. 50, bound for Kansas and a little Midwest friendliness. Somehow, I would find it in Garden City, 50 miles across the border, yet tied to the same region as my Ohio roots some 1,300 miles northeast. 

The town of 30,000 is a regional hub among the vast farm fields of Kansas. The west begins to take hold here, as influence of the Gulf of Mexico fades. But its location on the Arkansas River boosts local farming. 

Due to local meat-packing and farming operations, Garden City has a large Hispanic population, and good Mexican options are abound. I picked one that was packed inside, and took my burrito to go so I could have a quiet picnic at the Lee Richardson Zoo, Garden City's biggest attraction. 

I have written about the LRZ before, and it will write about it again, but the zoo remains the best place to wander around in southwestern Kansas. 

A free zoo (you can drive through for a fee), it has lions, lemurs, sloth bears, otters, and an impressive Cat Canyon exhibit with bobcats, cougars, jaguars and several species of leopards. Not animals came out - more comfortable in much warmer temperatures, the rhinos and giraffes were kept indoors. The lions were still stalking their prairies, with the males trading roaring sessions. 

I spent some time observing the zoo's newest arrivals, a pair of burrowing owls. The tiny owls live on the Great Plains and often occupy abandoned prairie dog tunnels. The zoo constructed a new exhibit with tunnels for the owls to occupy. 

Full on burrito and time outdoors, I found my hotel and headed for Hidden Trail Brewing, one of Garden City's two breweries. Hidden Trail is a standalone facility, with a big modern taproom that was crowded with Chiefs fans watching their Black Friday game with the Raiders. Some 375 miles from Kansas City, this was the western edge of Chiefs fandom, not the place to bring up favorable calls from referees. 

I ended up talking with a man who had a house in Green Mountain Falls (up the hill from Colorado Springs) but grew up in Garden City about what brought me there. He seemed glad that I was a little taken with his hometown. It's the first place I can get a taste of the Midwest. He invited me to come back for one of the various 5Ks run through the LRZ and downtown. 

As for the beers, they were fantastic, especially the honey strawberry wheat, which requires one to resist the urge to just pound the beer. They leaned toward hazy IPAs, but had a seriously dank pale ale that taste unlike anything else in the hoppy beer realm. The staff were friendly and rolled with all my questions about the brews.

With Black Friday in full swing, I stopped at a Goodwill and took the rare step of perusing their records. To my shock, another lady looking at them noted a big stock of recently stocked country records. An even bigger shock was their pristine condition. I could have left with a stack but opted for two classics - Merle Haggard's Mama Tried and an Elvis Christmas album. 

The night ended with more turns. I tuned to Applebee's for a nightcap. Not a place I had visited in a decade or maybe two. But it was relatively friendly and inexpensive. Plus, I was gunning to get my 10,000 steps so I needed a good walk. I ended up doing laps around a closed Sam's Club parking lot. I planned to use the hotel's treadmill, but after 20 seconds the screen went dark and could not be restored. So I wound down, expecting an early start even if Garden City had not yet risen. 

GC cat with cannon

Abandoned hotel 

Aside from a few runners and delivery drivers, I was alone downtown. A black cat crossed my path for far less time than I would have liked. 

Finney County courthouse

I bought a coffee and started walking the blocks. I hate to blame a certain ubiquitous big-box employee, but it shut out most of the business that would have occupied these downtown spaces. 

Garden City has a few spots with special history, such as the Finney County Courthouse, where the murderers from In Cold Blood were tried and sentenced to death. In this sparsely populated spot at the Midwest's edge, that history never goes away. 

Some change is afoot. The Flat Mountain Brewhouse, a steakhouse and home to Garden City's other brewery, has been transformed into the Main Street Food and Brew Hall, with five vendors and the brewery. That's enough enticement to draw me back in late spring, when I might need another night away. 

Inevitably, I decided to head west again. I could find more to like in Garden City, but wanted enough to fill a future night on the plains.