We took off for Topeka Friday morning. It was bright and sunny; the warmest it had been our entire trip– 67*. Six hours later we made it to the capitol just in time for the last tour of the day. We parked beside the capitol and quietly argued about where to park because we didn’t have enough quarters for the meter. The building was beautifully done, everything was new and polished. We quickly got our stamp, and then RJ had to scramble to find some quarters to put in our meter before we got a ticket. I waited in the lobby for the tour to start.

The tour started without RJ, I think I could see him running around periodically. The tour guide was a charming old man with bad delivery in his jokes which made it all the more endearing. Half way through the tour I found out this specific tour was not going to take us up to the dome which was rather disappointing considering that I’ve always wanted to visit the dome in Topeka since I was a little girl. When I had last visited, eleven years ago for a field trip, (shoutout to Mr. Koehn for such a fun field trip) I hadn’t been able to climb the dome because I was using crutches.

The stairs leading to the dome can be seen winding around the upper story

Around this time, RJ came in huffing and puffing asking for the keys and then ran off again… (I’m guessing the boy ran all the way out to the bike without the keys… smh). About ten minutes later, covered in a nice layer of sweat (I don’t think he works out much), he joined up with us for the remainder of the tour. Apparently, he had to run back and forth to the bike three times. The security guards were all making fun of him after the second trip back into the building.

Inside the capitol is a library, free to the public as long as they have a library card

The 2nd floor of the library has glass floors

The oldest book in the library is behind bars and can no longer be checked out.

We completed our tour and we were heading for the parking garage when an employee came over and stopped us. He asked us if that was our Kawasaki Versys in the garage. RJ just about crapped his pants because he thought something was wrong, but the man quickly assured us that everything was alright. Wes, according to his name tag, said he had been hunting us down ever since we got to the capitol. Apparently, he has been looking at getting an adventure bike and wanted to talk to us about it. RJ and he talked for awhile about bikes and whatnot. I kindly nodded my head as if I cared or understood.
As we were saying our goodbyes and good-to-meet-yous, he casually asked if we had taken the tour and been up to the dome. We told him we had toured the building but were unable to climb to the dome. And then Wes turned to us and uttered pure gold:

“Want to go? I’ll take you!”

Of course we did! Back inside we went. Wes used his super special key card and unlocked the door to the stairs. As we got into the upper dome room, we finally realized why the old tour guide didn’t want to go up to the dome. When you first come in, all you see is Jacob’s Ladder circumscribing the outer wall; it was daunting to say the least.

Huffing and puffing, the three of us climbed to the very top all the while talking about different types of bikes and adventures… I think RJ made the comment as we were going up: “Geesh, I’m guessing under that old man’s suit were some rock hard thighs!” referring to our original tour guide.

Once we reached the top, we took a couple pictures, caught our breath, aired out our overworked sweat glands and headed back down.

Thanks to Wes for making this trip 100x more memorable!

We used yelp and found a neat burger shack in a sketchy part of town. For a $1 upgrade, we were able to share a 1/3lb triple patty burger with fries and drink. I love America.

We sat and laughed about all that had happened as we shared our rather delicious burger. RJ got some work done as I relaxed and watched “Family Feud” on the TV.

About an hour or so later, we saddled up and took off for Omaha to where we’d be staying for the night…

To Be Continued…

– Emmy & RJ