The Fountain City
We left St Louis with much regret. We had really enjoyed our time there but we really had to get a move on because we’d booked our tickets to fly home from Wichita and time was our enemy. We crossed the Missouri River and headed to our next stopover, Columbia, Missouri.
We were only planning a 2 night stay here which is our general stay if we hadn’t heard much of the place. Columbia was one of those places. They have a very nice public lake/park called Stephens Lake Park which we took a walk around and they are also a few interesting structures but on the whole it wasn’t a memorable city. The only saving grace for us was that they had a Bass-Pro store. I wish they had stores like this at home! Because Columbia is the home of the “Tigers” (NFL team I think) they had a tiger theme going. They also had me in tears looking at how cheap they sell boats for in the USA. They’re about one third the price of what they cost in Australia.
After leaving Columbia we needed fuel so we stopped about 20 miles west on the highway. Sadly, as we pulled out of the gas station, Shane spotted a Russell Stover Chocolate outlet and that was that. Russell Stover does fantastic chocolates including a large range of sugar free delights. At these factory outlets you can buy wholesale their ‘imperfects’ too cheap to say no to. $38 and 6Kg later we got out of there and back on the highway to Kansas City. I’m so glad we don’t live there! Eventually we made it to Kansas City. As always Shane was madly snapping shots of the skyline and other structures as we drove by. We had 5 days in Kansas and we needed all of them to see what we had listed to look at. Kansas City was founded in the 1830’s as a Missouri River port and it has a population of around half a million people.
We visited the River Market district but had left it too late in the day to get the maximum enjoyment out of this interesting market place. We did, however, manage to get a good feed at Red Lobster. Have I mentioned the food here in the USA is plentiful? KC has adopted the title of The City of Fountains and as you’ll see in the photos there are a few. We also got to look at an area (a whole CBD really) known as Country Club Plaza. This area of about 15 blocks was developed in 1922 and features Spanish style architecture. It is a very nice zone for shopping if you can afford the high end shops there. The last 6 photos are of 3 of the churches in KC. The spiral steeple is very impressive.
Similar to several other cities we’d visited KC has redeveloped their Union Railway Station. It has some pretty mosaics and marble floors but the real attraction (amongst many there) for us was the model train exhibition. It is free and open to all and it has about 8 different displays from the smallest available model railway upwards. Nothing to explain in this gallery. Just enjoy the photos (I know the boys will) and watch our short video.
Finally in KC the best thing we experienced was the World War One Museum. This museum is rated the #4 museum in the USA and it is terrific. Most surprisingly to us was that one wing was solely dedicated to “Doughboys and Diggers”. The Aussies get quite a few mentions in this well laid out and very detailed museum. The exhibits are fantastic and actual relics that really take you to the battlefields. Again I will say nothing and let you peruse the photos. I do hope they can convey the feeling of the uselessness of war.
I apologise for taking so long with this post. I am actually recounting this from our digs at Townsville. After this post I have Wichita to do as our final stop on this leg of our USA adventure. I am trying to do a summary post of 2018 then that will be it for the year. We are returning to Wichita to continue our journey on Dec 29. Our rig is in storage at the home of a good mate I served with aboard HMAS Perth in 1973. Until then watch for the final 2 blogs for the year.
Cheers
Garry & Shane.