A Kansas City Roadtrip

Aside from just eating, drinking and catching up on episodes of The Newsroom, I did actually hope to achieve something from my visit to the USA.

Namely, to try and visit at least three cities that I have never been to before.

With this being my ninth trip to the States, you would imagine that I’d visited a lot of cities in my time, but alas they have tended to be the main players of tourist cities, including New York, Las Vegas, Washington, Philadelphia and Chicago.

I was hoping that in 2013 this was going to change, and thus an idea was born:  a Kansas City roadtrip.

Luckily for us, Scott has some family in Kansas City who were going on holiday for a week and wanted us to look after their house. Even more lucky for us was that they have a mahoosive house and a well-stocked fridge, so how could we say no?

Now, anyone who knows the distance from St. Louis to Kansas City (just over four hours) would probably think that this isn’t a proper  US roadtrip at all. But coming from England where a four hour drive would have to include at least a one nights’ stopover and plenty of provisions for the journey (not to mention the filling of the petrol tank the day before), then this seemed like a pretty big deal to me. I mean, you could cover half of England in that time, for goodness sake.

We set off in our rental car and made an obligatory Wendy’s stop halfway through the journey, which didn’t go down too well with the Basset Hound who was tormented by the sight of us eating chicken burgers through the window.

We arrived early evening and went for dinner with the family before we packed them off on their vacay and breathed a big sigh of relief that again we had our own place, if only for a week.

Barbecue, History and Giant Shuttlecocks

On my agenda for the week was eating barbecue (Kansas City is known for having some of the best barbecued meats in the country), visiting some cool dive bars and making a trip to the World War I museum (especially as I’m currently addicted to Downton Abbey and am thus addicted to learning more about WWI – I guess a TV period drama has done more for my education than my high school history lessons ever did. Maybe if I’d spent more time listening and less time laughing at my teacher’s lisp, it would have worked out differently).

I did it all, and then some.

I also took lots of pictures of giant shuttlecocks at the art museum. Like, way too many pictures.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from visiting Kansas City and living in a Cribs-style house for a week (aside from the fact that I’ll never be able to afford to live in a Cribs-style house) is that I’m determined to see more of the US than just the tourist side. Sure, the tourist cities are great, that’s why they’re so popular. But there’s so much more to see and do.

I mean, there’s barbecue out there, people. And that stuff needs eating, before I consume it all. There’s only so many pigs and cows to go around. So get a move on.