Kansas City and Independence Missouri

It is Wednesday evening and last night we stayed in Gretna, Nebraska.  That was the farthest west that the RV went (we drove a little more in the Jeep) and the odometer read 1,636 miles since we left Gahanna over three weeks ago.  Mapquest says we are 812 miles from home.  Today we started our return home!  Tonight we are about 30 miles east of Des Moines, Iowa in a place called Newton (home of the Iowa Speedway).

But I still haven't told you about all the places we've visited so far.  Last weekend we stayed in Oak Grove, Missouri.  That was our base of operations for trips to Topeka, Kansas, and Kansas City and Independence in Missouri.  Saturday morning we cooked pancakes at the RV and then took off to explore Kansas City.  We didn't know much about the city but had a recommendation about City Market in the waterfront district (Missouri River).  This is a wonderful, dynamic open air market surrounded by small restaurants.  The diversity was amazing.  There were vendors selling fruit, vegetables, honey, flowers and so many other things.  We were struck by the number of Vietnamese vendors.  Matthew had some fresh coconut milk.  Yummy.

 There were street performers, too.  And lots of people!

After this (we showed some unusual restraint and didn't buy any beignets - French donuts) we drove to Union Station, a huge art deco train station in downtown that now houses a science museum and several restaurants.  We had lunch there at a Fred Harvey place (this ties in to our trip to the south west where we learned a lot about the trains and Fred Harvey). 

 We then took a guided tour of the city.  This was a good choice.  We saw about 20 attractions that we never could have gotten to in the Jeep on our own.

 There is an outstanding World War I museum very close to Union Station.  Well, we only saw the OUTSIDE of the building, but heard that it is spectacular.

 This is looking back at Union Station and the KC skyline from the hill where the WWI museum is.

Here are some other images, things we saw on the trip.  These four towers are part of their convention center.  The sculptures on the top of each post cost a million dollars.  You may see these on TV if KC gets to host the next Republican presidential convention.

 This is their performance center.  Kind of a rip-off of Sydney.

 Our guide claims this is the world's largest lifting bridge of its type.  It's for trains and it spans the Missouri River.

 KC is known as the "City of Fountains."  There are hundreds of them around the city.  This is one of the more famous ones, in a part of town called The Plaza.

Our guide was quite entertaining.  She had lots of stories about crime and politics.  They seem to go together in KC.  She claimed that during prohibition there was not a single arrest made for selling liquor, the police simply ignored it.  She also mentioned the Pendergast political group that helped Harry Truman's career.  She also mentioned some gun fights that took place in front of Union Station and there are still bullet holes!  A mob boss had been arrested and federal marshals were escorting him off the train.  The boss's men attacked the marshals with machine guns, killing them but also killing the boss!

We left the city with lots of items on our to do list for the next visit.  Here's another view of the skyline.  Also, on the way to the RV camp we passed by their baseball stadium.

Our guide frequently mentioned famous Kansas City bar-b-que so we had to have some for supper.  We found a spot called Smokehouse Bar B Que not far from the RV park.  They gave us food for a family of six!  Oh, we looked up KC restaurants featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and there are about 12 of them!  Sadly, we didn't visit any!

The next day (Sunday) we attended a United Methodist church in Oak Grove.  The people were very friendly.  They were between ministers - their current minister had been assigned to a new church and their new minister would arrive next week.  So we hear the youth minister and a person from the Gideon society.  After that we went to the Harry Truman Presidential Library in Independence.  The displays focused on the difficult decisions he had to make during his presidency, including using the atomic bomb, integrating the armed services, and his treatment of the Korean war.  We were very happy that Matthew was willing to learn about the cold war and other aspects of Truman's presidency.

After that we pulled up stakes at the RV park and headed north and west, onward to Nebraska!

Matthew's Notes: When in Rome do as the Romans

• Burnt Ends taste better than they sound.
•  Smokehouse Bar-B-Q is a great place for some great KC Bar-B-Q.
• Kay-Cee the trolly is a great way to see the city, if it doesn't need gas!
• Einstein Bros. Bagels is AWESOME!