Americana Travels,
Pt 9: Kansas City
May 20th, 2012 – We woke up in Kansas City,
Missouri. Kansas City, Missouri. Huh . . . never once imagined that I’d say
that.
Well, it was about 10:00am when we were awoken by the
Olympic Hopscotch Trials on the floor above us. Judging by the rhythmic
thumping, we’ve got gold in the bank. Today was a lazy day towards our site
goals, and we kinda’ knew that going into it, hence the later start. Grab the
zzz’s where you can and hope for the best.
We didn’t actually leave the hotel room until almost noon,
so we were a bit peckish. The first stop of the day would be a crepe place that
had gluten-free crepes. Crepes. That’s a funny word. If I had a crepe
restaurant, I’d name it “Oh Crepe!” or “For Crepe’s Sake!” Say it loud, say it
proud . . . CREPE! Anyway, the place was called Chez Elle and their specialty
was the crepe, and all of their crepe flavors were in some French phrasing. We
took one of the last seats on the front patio and figured out what flavors we
were going to explore. I went in and ordered, and a few minutes later, Mrs.
Pope was delivered her tomato, grilled onion, and spinach crepe, and I got one
with mushrooms, spinach, grilled onions, artichokes, and provolone, and
although the meal was all of three hundred calories, we were filled for the
time being and fueled up enough to tackle downtown K.C.
We drove haphazardly through some worn out areas of downtown
Kansas City, past some beautifully run down and dilapidated red brick buildings
with train tracks running in between them. This part of town definitely had
that old city vibe . . . lots of bats, rats, and stray cats running around in
those darkened corners of late 1800’s architecture. It a cool little trip,
though a little chilling as one could easily see the zombie apocalypse pandemic
being born in these very same buildings. We turned a corner and mounted on the
side of one of these buildings was the subject of our first quest . . . a
monstrous cap gun! Dude’s . . . this sucker was huge and ornately detailed,
reminding me of the time when I was all of two or three years old and my grandfather
tried to put me on an airplane from New Jersey to San Diego strapped with a
pair of these babies! Hehe . . . yeah, I may have been an adorable three year
old, but even the airline didn’t take too kindly to me packing chromed out
plastic cap gun heat.
We quickly weaved our way out of this little chunk of K.C.
history and made our way south a bit. Next on the list was the upscale portion
of downtown, the yuppier part of town, and before too long, we found a giant
Bison skeleton propped up on a pedestal on 9th Street. It wasn’t a
real skeleton, at least, not real bones from a real bison . . . it was more
like a sculpture. We parked the car, quite possibly illegally, and I hopped out
of the car, ran across the street, and snapped a photo of the beasty. While I
was scampering across the street, I notice a sundial hanging from the side of
the wall . . . I made the mental note to get a shot of that guy while I was
dodging oncoming traffic. Without any damages occurring to my being, I got
pictures of both unique items and hopped back in the car. I was a little disappointed
in the shot of the sundial because when I first saw it, there was some healthy
cloud cover going on, so the sundial just looked like a weird plaque on the
wall of a building. When I actually got the shot of the dial, the sun had come
out of hiding and made the thing useful. The lesson I got from this expedition
was a sundial works best when the sun is out.
We zipped around the corner from the bison and sundial, and
found another pretty cool oddity . . . a giant needle with thread and a button.
Again, we parked the car in a questionable place (thank God it was Sunday) and
ran across the street to get a photo of this sculpture paying homage to the
Garment District of Kansas City. A few minutes later, we were back on the mean
streets of K.C. and onto our next site. The final downtown proper site of this
trip was a city block made of books. Apparently, this was the facade of the
city library and where I thought it was going to be a bunch of books stacked on
one another and to actual scale, what greeted us was so much cooler! Like books
on a shelf, the façade was something like fifty feet tall and made up of
twenty-five aptly chosen titles. Well, some were apt, some were head
scratchers, and I bet if we had taken the time to investigate the title choices
at greater length, they would have made more sense. In all though, this was a
damn impressive site and as far as libraries go, only the New York City Library
has impressed me more. Even the steps leading into the building were in the
shape of books . . . talk about taking a theme and committing to it!
It was probably only a hair after 1:00pm . . . wait, let me
refer to the sundial in the last part . . . yeah, actually about 1:30pm
according to the sun, and we were en route to the 56 and an area of town that I
thought had something to do with the local university. After looking back on
the map, I don’t see any university over there, but what we did find was a giant
statue of the Gate’s Man, a symbol of all that is good with K.C. BBQ. Kinda’
cool statue and one I wouldn’t mind having in my front yard . . . to hell with
the neighbors! Anyway, after snapping a few photos of this really tall dude, we
were on a mission to find some caffeine, and while en route to the local
Starbuck’s we stumbled on one of the Original Twelve Sites of the road trip.
Big Ass Shuttlecocks! On the massive sprawl on the lawn in front of the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was a pair of shuttlecocks . . . c’mon and say it
with me, its fun . . . shuttlecocks!
We parked on one of the streets adjacent to the park, hopped
a short wall, and strolled through the nice tree lined paths to the massive
lawn. I wandered to the first shuttlecock, struck a pose while Mrs. Pope
snapped some outstanding shots, and we then wandered around the park a bit. We
found a little building that was built as some sort of learning center, and it
was all powered by solar energy. In fact, there was one room where you could
test how much juice a human could generate in fifteen seconds in comparison to
what the sun could generate. Here’s the deal . . . you push the red button, and
three seconds later, you crank the hand crank as fast you possible can for fifteen
seconds. Once that fifteen seconds is up, the screen in front of you reads out
how much energy you created (mine was 91 something or others . . . which was
fairly high in comparison to other visitors of the booth (moment of pride)),
but a mere fraction of what the sun produces. It was completely fascinating.
From there we saw another sculpture that we thought looked
pretty cool on a nearby hill, so I jogged up the hill and Mrs. Pope caught
another picture of me in front of a giant chrome tree. Suddenly, my inner
twelve year old took over . . . and I rolled down the hill! Yeah. Next time y’all
get the opportunity to roll down a hill, please . . . for the love of God, do
so! It only hurts for a sec and it’s more fun than you’ll remember having the
last time you did such a thing.
From there, we walked back to the car and realized that we’d
completed the day’s discoveries. Damn . . . that was a quick day! We drove to
the Starbuck’s, went through the drive-thru and saw some cool wall art, then
realized that we had no idea where we were going, so went inside to peruse the
internet. We searched for an Old Town Area, but couldn’t figure out what was
going on and really didn’t feel like doing a museum to kill the rest of the
day. Then we remembered that we wanted to get massages to replace the one’s we
had from a couple of days ago. The problem we were facing was that it was
Sunday and most of the places were closed or closing soon. We finally found a
spa that was open and could take us in the Westport area called Shine Spa. We
were able to schedule a couple of massages, and at 4:30pm, I was getting a
massage that completely made me forget the mediocre massage from Wichita.
As soon as we got out of our massages, Mrs. Pope and I
looked at each other and in unison said, “Damn, I’m hungry.” We went to a BBQ
place that we were told about called Oklahoma Joe’s and we were actually pretty
excited to try this joint out. When we pulled up the restaurant, we saw that it
was attached to a gas station and better yet, closed. So, we remembered that we
had been next to Gate’s BBQ when we started this leg of the journey and decided
to give that one a try. After making left and right turns all over the place,
we eventually got the restaurant and over ordered. We both ordered the sampler
plate, where one plate would probably have been enough for three people.
Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, we took home a lot of food.
We got home at just about 8:00pm and began researching,
plotting, and writing. The night is over. I’m ready to call it and get into the
mindset of hitting the road for Springfield, Missouri.
See y’all on the road.
Pope
Quote of the Day:
Pope: “Ow, I hurt”
Mrs. Pope: “Why don’t you get up and stretch?”
Pope: “Coz’ my laziness has outweighed my pain.”
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