Our general travel route for this week...
Well it definitely feels like we are in the home stretch now. Leaving Columbia Saturday morning we slowly made our way through more backroads to Oak Grove, just east of Kansas City where we spent the next 4 nights, at the KOA, as we had to wait for the KC Royals to start a home stand on Tuesday before we could catch a ball game here.
The first thing to note is that Kansas City is actually two cities... Kansas City Missouri and Kansas City Kansas. The Kansas City in Missouri is actually where the Kansas City Royals are located and that is why we are here. If you want to see baseball in Kansas City, Kansas you either cross the state line or you can follow the Kansas City T-Bones, a member of the
American Association of Independent Baseball (no affiliation with MLB). Who knew there were two Kansas Cities separated by a state line? We always thought there was just Kansas City; in Kansas of course! Man, what you learn when you travel!
We checked into the East Kansas KOA (in Missouri) relatively early so Saturday afternoon we decided to try another "shrine" from our BBQ Bible,
Oklahoma Joe's, besides our friends James and Melissa were recently in Kansas City and speak very highly of Oklahoma Joe's. We decided to try out one of the "branch" sites (besides the original there are two other outlets). Using mapquest we figured out where all three were and set out to visit the newest one (just opened in July) in Leawood. We got there to find nothing but office buildings with no sign of any kind of BBQ. We gave up on that one and headed for the one in Olathe. This one we found, went in and had some decent BBQ. We told the cashier that the Leawood address on their website was incorrect and they need to fix it. She and another employee were adamant that it was correct and we told them to get in a car and go see for themselves... well, guess what, it turns out the mathematician in our family transposed a couple of numbers and we were off by about 5 blocks...it's at 11723 Roe Ave not 11273 (duh).
Sunday we drove into downtown Kansas City (the one in Missouri) for a coffee and a look around. It was a pretty normal big city downtown on a Sunday morning. Not much happening. They have some cool old architecture...
We went into
Fran's Restaurant, in the Power and Light District, for a late light breakfast then drove around downtown a bit more (nothing being open) before heading over to the
historic 18th and Vine district to visit the
Negro League Baseball Museum and the
American Jazz museum. WOW... These two museums share one building and they are both just fabulous! You know when you are in the 18th and Vine historic district by the street flags...
After spending about 3 hours in the two museums, we drove south through several cool looking neighbourhoods to find
BB's Lawnside BBQ where we feasted on some more mighty fine BBQ. They had a very loud band playing inside the relatively small establishment so we opted to sit outside on the patio where we managed to fling a decent amount of bbq sauce on ourselves as we attempted to shoo away flies! Where's that red Cardinal's t-shirt when you really need it???
Later that afternoon, while sitting at our campsite, we saw a cool view of clouds forming...
Monday we drove over to Independence Missouri where we stopped for a Starbucks before touring the
National Frontiers Trail Museum. Another excellent and fun museum...
After that it was a bit of shopping, more sightseeing around Kansas City and a try at the BBQ at Oklahoma Joe's Original location. Yummmm!
Tuesday was ball game night so we had to find something to do during the day. After stopping in at the stadium to get tickets for the game (and telling the ticket guy that we pretty well guarantee a win for the Royals), we decided to drive about an hour and a half, south west into Kansas, to Osawatomie to go to the
John Brown Museum (recall from previous posts re: the Civil War that John Brown was the abolitionist who, one might say, basically set the wheels in motion for the war). Osawatomie, just south east of Lawrence was pretty much the epicenter of the events known as
Bleeding Kansas ,the violence between pro and anti slavery groups.
The museum is very interesting. It is the original cabin of the Adair family, John Brown's half sister. The cabin is essentially intact except for the part that was burned when some goof on a museum break-in spree set fire to the cabin in the 1990's. Back in the 1920's the cabin was recognized as a piece of national history and was moved to it's present location and a stone building was built around it for protection and conservation (except of course for the aforementioned break-in and fire).
Tuesday was also the day that the rain, which has been somewhat following us around, hit the Kansas area. It rained all morning during our drive south to Osawatomie and back again into Kansas but luckily it stopped at least 4 hours before game time. Back in Kansas we decided to try the last of our planned BBQ joint visits in Kansas City, LC's BBQ. They don't have their own website but if you google it there are lots of hits for reviews etc. There are numerous reviews about how run down looking it is etc etc, but this is our kind of bbq place. As one reviewer put it "True BBQ shack, not a fancy chain, just good ole bbq"... and nothing said can be more true than that. Walk in and it's a bit divey looking but clean and the smoke pit is right there so you can see what is happening...
...just make sure the cook isn't in the way of your picture; he went a bit "off his meds" as he skedaddled out of the way muttering "I don't wanna be in a picture; why do people have to take my picture..." amongst other slurs against tourists! We ordered a combo plate of brisket, smoked turkey and ribs, an order of burnt ends and the usual potato salad and slaw.... and it was great! For about $30 we got much more than we could eat in a single sitting. In fact we took away the rest and had it for dinner for the next two nights!
After taking the leftovers back to the trailer to be put in the cooler, we had a brief rest then headed off to Kaufman Stadium to see the Royals take on the visiting Oakland A's. The stadium is right off of I-70 so was easy to get to. It is only the second one on this trip (the other being the Rangers ballpark in Arlington) which is not right downtown. This one is situated in a Sports Complex along with Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the NFL Kansas City Chiefs, about 8 miles or so west of downtown.
Very nice ballpark... and we got free t-shirts too boot. Too bad we weren't there for a bobblehead doll game but that's the way the schedule goes. Our seats were in a great location...
... and there were few other fans around us so foul ball possibilities were high; but of course none came our way; a few to the sections on either side of us. What good is that? The Royals appear to have very loyal fans... the two guys sitting in front of us looked like they came directly from the farm to the game (these were not ironic bib overalls)...
The game started out a bit close, but our home team mojo kicked in when the Royals cashed in 5 runs in the 5th inning and that was it for the night. Final 5-0 Royals.
So that's it for MLB games for this trip. We can call this trip a "mojo" success. 9 games with 7 being won by the home team. The only two visitor wins were by the Yankees for whom, of course, Brian was rooting.
Wednesday we continued our trek west as we headed to WaKeeny Kansas. This was an interstate day as we decided to just get across this part of the country and the scenery across Kansas is pretty much the same doesn't matter how you cut it... and the drought isn't helping. Everything is pretty well bone dry.
On the way to WaKeeny we stopped for lunch in Salina, a commercial hub west of Kansas City. Nice main drag with some beautiful old buildings including the theatre which is on the US National Register of Historic Buildings...
We checked into the WaKeeny KOA and the fellow reminded us that we had stayed there on April 7th on our way south. Was it really that long ago??? Nice clean place with a nice pool (although it wasn't open in April). When we checked in, we asked if the pool was open and the fellow said "...yes, but it is a bit chilly". After checking in we hoped into the pool and it was wonderful! Nice and brisk, not warm like some pools we have encountered. That evening we drove into the small town and stopped in at the historic old Western Kansas Saloon and Grill on main street. Cool old place that must have seen some interesting times.
Thursday we headed north into Nebraska. We stopped in the little town of Oberlin Kansas for a lunch break and found the
LandMark Inn a historic bank building that has been converted to a bed and breakfast. Very sweet. The restaurant is open to the public as well as the guests, however they don't have a real menu. They make a certain amount of different dishes and that's it. After seating us, the hostess read off what was available; sort of like "... well we have one omelette, two chef salads, one ham and cheese sandwich, etc...". Lucky we got there when we did otherwise the pickings might have been a tad slim. Excellent lunch though. Continuing on after lunch we stopped for the day in North Platte Nebraska. North Platte is the home of the Union Pacific Railroad's
Bailey Yard which they claim is the world's largest
classification yard at 2 miles wide and over 8 miles long. We drove over to the rail yards and went up the
Golden Spike Tower where you have a view out over part of the yard; being able to see the eastbound hump and the engine maintenance building. When we bought our tickets the young lady in the office assured us that the docent on the 8th floor viewing area would be able to answer any questions. The docent, as it happens was probably old enough to have been present when the last spike was driven, was not able to answer any of our questions (and all the questions were either Union Pacific or railway related, we weren't slipping in any tricky bonus point questions). A family of railway buffs were in the viewing area and they were able to answer our questions, so I guess the docent got to 'call a friend'. All in all, quite an impressive and interesting operation...
Moving west across Kansas the signs of the brutal drought continued. It wasn't until we got up into Nebraska, where it appears there is more irrigation, that we started to see some decent looking crop fields.
Friday we continued west to Cheyenne Wyoming stopping for lunch at Sidney, Nebraska. Sidney is somewhat famous for being the world headquarters of the
Cabela's one of the world's largest outdoor outfitter chains. We didn't go into the store in Sidney and, for that matter, have never been in one of their stores but a guy at the campground claims the store in Sidney is the largest outfitter store in the USA.
However, speaking of large things, on the outskirts of the town we drove past quite a large field of sunflowers...
The evening temperature in Cheyenne dropped out of the warm/hot zones we have been used to so we had to unpack our jean jackets for the sit outside, but the sunset sure was worth it...
