We're not in Kansas anymore!

We are back in Iowa after our long weekend in the City of Fountains! We went down to Kansas City Friday night. Our hotel was in Overland Park, a suburb in Kansas. Saturday was cold, cloudy, and snowy. In the morning, we went to Country Club Plaza. It was one of the first planned shopping centers, built in the 1920s with a cool Spanish style. Everywhere, there are fountains and sculptures. The shops are pretty high end, but it was neat to walk around. Even though it was snowing, it was our first experience this year with flowers outdoors. After that, we went to Crown Center, which is an attraction that the Hallmark Company has built around their headquarters. They have a museum of greeting cards, ornaments, and Hallmark Hall of Fame TV Specials. If that sounds interesting to you, you'd love it! On Saturday afternoon, we went out to the Kansas Speedway. There is a Cabela's there, and a huge outdoor mall place. They had a theme restaurant called T-Rex, which is built to look like a big jungle mountain, with fullsize dinosaurs around and inside. We thought Asher would love it, but he was absolutely terrified. Maybe in a year or so! Here is a pic of Asher on top of a rock outside of Cabela's, with the speedway and a couple of ducks in the background.



On Sunday, we went to the Royals / Twins game. It was a good game, but the weather was terrible. It was bitter cold and a steady, biting wind was blowing right into our seats, which were in a section of the ballpark that I think could be used as a basecamp for moon missions.


The game was fun though. The Royals are playing good baseball right now, and the crowd was excited. They have a great tradition after the game, where anybody can run the bases. Of course, we had to do that!


Yesterday we finally got a beautiful, sunny day, and we went to the Kansas City Zoo, which is phenomenal zoo! We had it pretty much to ourselves. It is a huge zoo, with huge exhibit areas stretched out through woods, over hills, and over a river. The Africa area is massive, and very natural, with differnt animals seemingly running free on islands and different bits of land around a big lake. It is cool to see giraffes, rhinos, and elephants with room to run full speed. The chimp exhibit is a huge hillside with hundreds of trees, and the chimps have the full run of the place, operating in their natural social groups and everything. It was really an amazing zoo! Asher absolutely loved it. From the zoo, we headed back to Des Moines, getting here in time for our class at church.

OK, now to the results of our unscientific Kansas City barbeque study. We made it to three legendary BBQ places:

• Gates: Good ribs, good brisket, and excellent sauce. Gates sauce is already my favorite bottled sauce available here in Iowa, and it was a solid meal.
• Arthur Bryant: Probably the most legendary KC Barbeque place. The people there were incredibly friendly, and the place felt exactly right. The ribs were disapointing, though, and the sauce is not my cup of tea, very sour and mustardy.
• Oklahoma Joes: This place is in a gas station. It's no gimmick, it's in a real Shamrock station. Joe's is extremely popular, though, and Saturday afternoon the line weaved all the way through the convenience store and out the door into the blowing snow. The food was amazing. These were the best ribs, the best brisket, and the best sauce I've ever had. This is my new standard for good barbeque. Amazing!

OK, I think that I've probably bored everyone enough for tonight. Here is a picture of Kansas City I took Sunday afternoon from on top of the World War 1 Museum.