Day 55 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today we will drive a few hundred KM and position ourselves near the Kansas Oklahoma State Line.  We are going to meet Laurel at her Afton Station on Route 66 on Tuesday.
 
As we drove from Hays Kansas to Independence KS this is some of the scenery that we saw.   Lots and lots of wind turbines, and it was very windy as we were driving with gusts to 40 mph.  I would love one of these planted right in my yard at home.



At one of the roadside rest areas we saw this sign… I have always liked the TV show Rawhide, and they always drove their cattle along the Chisholm Trail… so maybe another future road trip could be to try and follow the Chisholm Trail… just an idea….



In case you didn’t know or hadn’t noticed, we are no longer in the Mountains… Kansas is pretty flat.



The Sunflower is the official flower of Kansas, but we have not seen any sunflowers yet.  We have seen wind turbines, cows, horses and corn.



Now I don’t typically use this blog to endorse products or brands, but I do want to say that I have been really impressed with Microtel Inn & Suites.  We typically stay at Days Inn or Super 8, but occasionally we have stayed at a Microtel.  All three are part of the Wyndham Group of Hotels and we earn points for each night stay and can use those points for free nights from time to time.  The few times that we have stayed at a Microtel, we have always found them to be modern, bright and clean.  They are however a bit small but we didn’t mind that.  I just figured that was where the word Micro came from in their name… small rooms. 

When we book, we always just book the standard room at the cheapest rate.  At our last Microtel that we stayed at we peaked into one of the suites and thought, wow that is pretty nice.  So I inquired at the front desk how much more a suite costs over what we had just paid.  I was guessing maybe $30.00 more and I couldn’t believe the answer… just $5.00 more.  The suite, is twice the size of their standard room and includes a little kitchenette.

So tonight we are staying at another Microtel and this time we reserved the suite…  What a nice room and we are here for two nights.  We could stay here a month and be quite comfortable.  Here are some pictures of our Microtel Suite.





We have stayed at other hotels for twice the price that weren't even half as nice as this, so from now on we are going to check for Microtel’s at our destinations before thinking of booking at any other hotel.

To see all of our photos from today you can see them on my FLICKR site.