Live from the Wienermobile: Escape to Oz

Here's the latest on-the-road dispatch from our Weinermobile girls. You can read more about their hot dogging adventures by clicking here

by Selena Armendarez and Molly Ferges

We’ll be frank: We’ve been giddy about our trip to Wamego, KS since it was scheduled (around the time of our first hurricane, back in July).

With a quaint Main Street and picturesque windmill, the small town would be a pleasant stop for an afternoon of fudge samples and antique shopping…if you hadn’t been a Wizard of Oz fan since birth, like us.

But Oz fans we are, and Wamego is Mecca.

Each year, the town of about 4,000 brings in more than 30,000 visitors – all thanks to the State of Kansas-funded Oz Museum, which enjoys plum Main Street real estate. Now, the town is flush with Wizard-themed businesses, including Totoz Tacoz, a Mexican restaurant and the Emerald City Market, a gourmet food shop.

Sheepishly, we loved it all. The town was touristy, the theme restaurants cheesy and the gift shop stocked with frivolous souvenirs, but Dorothy and her pals hold a special place in our hearts.

As kids, we both obsessed over this film. We rewound so often that the Wicked Witch lost her fear factor, Halloween costumes rotated among characters, and red shoes were de rigueur.

The museum didn’t disappoint. A sepia farmhouse opens up into a Technicolor display of L. Frank Baum memorabilia, a Haunted Forest replica and life-size movie figurines. We reveled in the nostalgia, but at some point we realized the movie isn’t too different from our own cross-country adventure: We spend plenty of time outrunning extreme weather, shopping for shoes, and journeying to new lands.