Month: November 2023

Kansas City, November 1 to 4, 2023

Well Chris and I have been on the road again! This past Wednesday we headed to Kansas City for a few days. I had a conference on Thursday for School Board Secretaries at the Kansas City Convention Center, so Wednesday was our travel day. We loaded up the car and headed out in the morning and arrived in Kansas City that afternoon, after only one unnecessary stop at an antique store. Chris found a book by one of his favorite dead authors, so it was a successful shopping trip.

The accommodations provided for the night before the conference are at the Marriott Downtown Kansas City, which is a very nice hotel. We enjoy getting out and walking around the city, but Wednesday was a little chilly, so we did not do as much walking as we would have liked. There are so many places to eat in the area, and we like to try different places, so we did explore enough to find a very interesting bar/restaurant for dinner and a nice coffee shop for breakfast the next morning. Last year we really enjoyed the Power and Light District, but it was just too cool this year for us to enjoy being out after dark.

We were quite close to the downtown branch of the Kansas City Public Li持久液
brary:

We chose the Milwaukee Delicatessen for dinner in a refurbished old downtown building that has been restored to accentuate its history while still providing modern necessities. Here’s a link to their page detailing the history of the building and business: https://milwaukeedelikc.com/history/

We particularly admired the ornate ceiling:

And here’s an exterior view of the building:

We enjoyed wonderful food and met a couple of friendly out-of-towners while sitting at the bar, the only seats in the busy establishment, all the while absorbing the welcoming atmosphere of the historic place and easily imaging how it was back in the day. After our satisfying and enjoyable visit to the Milwaukee Delicatessen, we headed back to the hotel to call it a day.  The view from our window was quite pretty:

Here’s the view on Thursday morning:

After a good night’s sleep, we got up on Thursday morning and headed to Mildred’s Coffee Shop for breakfast. The Marriott does serve a fairly nice breakfast, but for the price they charge we decided we could explore a little and enjoy some of the what the locals have to offer. Mildred’s did not disappoint. When we were done with breakfast it was time to walk back to the hotel and get the bags ready for check out. Then I headed to the conference which is basically across the street from the Marriott, and Chris headed out for the day on his own, until 3:00, when he had to pick me up at the Convention Center.

Chris adds: Last year I found it challenging to “waste” the time between Tracy going to her conference in the morning and me picking her up in the afternoon. This time I put out a call on my role-playing game group to see if there was anyone who was willing and able to take off a few hours in the middle of a working day to play games, and in fact three people showed up for a session at Mission: Board Games in Mission, Kansas from 10:00am to 2:00pm. As that store is connected directly to a coffee shop, we were able to eat there and not lose too much playing time. I enjoyed it, and I think the players did too; they indicated interest in doing it again, so we’ll see if I can pull it off again next year. Afterward, I made it back to the Convention Center in plenty of time to pick up Tracy.

When Chris picked me up after the conference, which was fantastic as expected, we headed out to our new accommodations for the next couple of nights, the Independence Drury. We always try to stay in the Independence area, as our friends Dave and Angie live near there. We checked in and just rested from the day we had both had until it was time to meet Dave and Angie for dinner. We ate at The Corner Cafe, where Dave suggested and as it was a less than 5 minute walk from our hotel we readily agreed.

After dinner, they came back to our hotel and we visited for the rest of the evening in the very comfortable lobby. Dave and Angie are those friends that we only see once or twice a year, but every time we get together it is like we just saw one another last week. We made plans to meet for dinner the next evening at Lions Choice. Lions Choice is our favorite St. Louis area fast food restaurant and we were so happy to discover at least two now in the Kansas City area.

Friday morning we woke up to a cool damp morning, but that did not change our plans of going to Parkville, MO in search of a rescued bridge for Chris to see. I will let him explain all about the bridge, but I will say it was a very unique bridge in a cute park with very nice walking paths, and we enjoyed exploring the park and examining and photographing the bridge. The weather was improving and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

Chris adds: The bridge at Parkville is a Waddell “A” Frame truss, one of just two known to exist in the US. It started life as a railroad bridge, was sold to the state and re-used on a county road, and after being dismantled it laid in a DOT yard for a couple of decades before Parkville decided they needed a bridge for their park. Engineering students, contractors, and volunteers helped reassemble the bridge in the park. I’m kind of a bridge geek, I suppose, but I really enjoyed seeing it first-hand; it’s bigger than you’d think from looking at the picture.

Parkville also had some interesting statues carved from tree stumps in the park:

This eagle was placed perfectly to get a photo with the bridge in the background:

Last year on one of our two trips to Kansas City we discovered The Roasterie Cafe, a coffee shop that is attached to a roasting facility which gives tours of the roasting, bagging and shipping process. I wanted to do a tour then, but we did not have time as we had to pick Taylor up shortly. The building would have been hard to miss as it has an airplane on the roof!

When we drove past it last year, I recognized it immediately because the hotel we had stayed in the night before served their coffee and had a poster on the wall by the coffee maker. I had really liked the coffee, so I was happy to discover I could get some of their coffee to bring home. Jump to this trip to Kansas City, the only item I had on my agenda was a tour of the facility and even though he does not like coffee, Chris was ready and willing to do the tour. We learned a lot about what goes into sourcing, roasting, bagging, shipping and delivering a very popular coffee product.

Their first roaster, “Baby”

The new ones are a bit bigger:

Here’s a view of a larger area of the Roasterie:

One of the other people in the tour group we were in is a journalism student and was on the tour to write a story about The Roasterie for her class. She wanted to interview some of the others on the tour, especially people from out of town. Chris and I both agreed to the interview when she asked and she told me she would share her article when it gets published on her schools website. When I get access to the link, I will share it here so anyone who wants to can read it. Of course I bought coffee to bring home, but I am happy to know I can order this coffee and have it delivered anytime I want it.

When we were finished at The Roasterie, it was time to start looking for somewhere to have lunch. Chris wanted to go to the Micro Center and a gaming store in Overland Park, KS, so we headed in that direction and just watched for some place that looked interesting to eat. We found a Mexican restaurant, La Fuente Mexican Street Food, located in the same shopping center as the Micro Center. Since we both love street tacos it was an easy decision where to eat. We were not a bit disappointed, but the tacos were much messier than we are used to getting. After Chris explored the Micro Center and I went to an antique store nearby, we decided it was time to find some thrift stores and we did, we bought a couple of small things, but neither one of us found anything we really “needed”. By now it was time to head back to Independence and meet up with Dave and Angie again. Once again after eating we came back to the hotel and visited until almost midnight, since nobody had to be up early on Saturday.

Saturday morning we woke up to another cold and rainy day, but there was a difference from Friday, it stayed cold and rainy for the remainder of our time in the area. After breakfast and loading the car, we once again headed to Kansas to find a couple more bridges Chris wanted to see. We did detour to the downtown Kansas City, MO area to experience the City Market, a daily market that has both outdoor framers market booths and permanent indoor booths, stores and restaurants. We did quite a bit of shopping here and came home with some spices, teas and sodas to enjoy over the next weeks and months.

I got some tea at this stand.  There were a lot of varieties to choose from!

I had actually seen this streetcar earlier in Kansas City but this was the first good opportunity to photograph it.

Then it was on to Kansas to find the bridges.  Both were easy to find and Chris had a great time examining their construction and marveling over the fact they were both built from scraps of a bridge that had been taken out of service.

Chris adds: The first one we looked up was in a park in Troy, Kansas, and it’s another Waddell “A” frame. Remember I said there were only two? I was really happy to get to see them both. This smaller one was apparently built from parts taken from another bridge, which is itself kind of amazing to me.

Troy is the county seat of Doniphan County and has a nice looking courthouse, so we stopped and photographed the courthouse and looked at the military memorials in the courtyard along with a carved statue that had been donated to the county.

Here’s a bit about the statue:

The second bridge was just a few miles from Troy, so we found it in just a few minutes after leaving town. A short section of  the road we took from the second bridge site heading into St. Joseph was signed as being an original part of the Pony Express Route.

Chris adds: This bridge was also built out of pieces; specifically, the end panels of a larger “camelback” truss. It was very cool to see it.

We once again went looking for thrift stores in St. Joseph and we found several. This time we made a few small purchases but no big finds. I enjoy finding good quality kitchen items at thrift store prices and I found a couple, including a Henckels Classic 6 inch chef knife. I really like good quality kitchen knives and I have gotten several at thrift stores that just needed sharpening, but this one isn’t even completely dull. I will sharpen it and have it ready to go for when I want to use it.

It was now getting late in the afternoon, so we decide to eat lunch and then head home. We ate at PepperJax Grill and had an amazing Philly steak sandwich and some pretty good french fries. Instead of taking Highway 36 we took Missouri Highway 6 home, which was much more interesting. We took the time to drive around in most of the small towns we went through and Trenton was by far the most interesting to us. We are planning to go back in warmer weather and do some more exploring.

This mural is quite cool.

They have a large historical museum with buildings on both sides of the street.  This was the scene behind the main building:

When we got home it was unpacking and laundry time. I got most of the laundry done before we went to bed Saturday night, but I did have a little to finish up Sunday morning. We also remembered to set our clocks back, so we got an extra hour of sleep to recover from out adventure. Now to wait and see what adventures the future holds for us.