Kansas City, Kansas? Missouri?

Our next stop was still in Missouri...or maybe Kansas...?  I'm pretty sure we're still not quite sure where exactly we were.  I mean it is kind of confusing...Kansas City....I mean, you think Kansas City, Kansas right?  Why is one city in two states anyway!  Eh, whatever- Our hotel's address was Missouri, so I'm going to go with that.  Once again, the people were just so nice!  We went out for dinner and a drink after checking into our hotel (our waitress was pretty awesome)...I must say the food on the road has been pretty good!

our hotel in the back

And again we weren't sure what we were going to KC to see.  But, just like Memphis has a rich musical past, so does Kansas City...so we decided we were going to go to it's famous street, like Beale Street in Memphis.  In Kansas City that's 18th and Vine.

You can feel the history in this city.  It's one of those places that you visit and you just know that great things had happened there back in the day.  We decided to do some museums (I think we did a museum in almost every city we stopped at.  It can never be said that we aren't looking to be educated, and cultured.).  Here, it was the Jazz Museum, and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.  Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside either. Fortunately, while we were there there happened to be a special exhibit on one of the greatest jazz singers ever to do it ...Ms. Ella Fitzgerald.  Needless to say both Jas and I were excited about that!

even the bathrooms were musical

This stop was relatively low key...but you need some low key visits to balance crazy nights.

And the adventure continues...

Stay tuned...

Missouri

From Tennessee we headed to Missouri, and after a couple of chilly hours sleeping in the car (so is the life of a traveler), we made it to our next state.

Originally we had no idea where the heck we wanted to go in MO.  I'm less of a planning person, and more of a what the heck, I'll figure it out as I go person...but after some research, I believe Jas came up with the perfect place.  May I introduce (in case you haven't heard of it), the Meramec Caverns.  The place where the outlaw Jesse James and his gang chose to hideout back in his day.  For those of you who know about my slight obsession with John Dillinger, you can guess that I have a keen interest for these types of true stories.  I believe I might have been born in the wrong time period...I would have loved to be a Dillinger moll.

 But I digress...This cave was a sight to behold.  It's amazing that such beauty goes unseen by so many eyes.

Light show

However, our cave tour would not, just could not have been the same without our tour guide!  He had that dry kind of sense of humor that you either get, or you don't.  Unfortunately, the other few people in our tour didn't get it so much.  Perhaps the fact that a few of them were from out of the country didn't help.  But, Jas and I loved him.  He hit every comedic note perfectly.  Ending with a spectacular lights show that went along with the song God Bless America...and ended with the American flag, surrounded by beautiful colors!  It really was hilarious, but it kind of loses some of it's humor in the translation from reality to blog.

Rob- our guide

After the tour I approached our resident expert for a picture.  Apparently people don't often do that because he looked shocked, in that dorky, endearing white guy kind of way!



Then we made our way to the gift shop.  What is it about gift shops that make you want to take ridiculous pictures with the most ridiculous things you'd never actually buy.  Like these crazy fun hats.  It's really like they were calling us to put them on and catch the moment on film (figuratively speaking since pretty much no one actually uses film anymore.), so we listened to them...
















And the adventure continues...


Stay tuned...