We Are Not in Kansas City Anymore

The day dawned in Bolivar, Missouri cloudy and a little chilly. We planned our day and took care of some personal finances and went into town to the post office and on our way passed Simon Bolivar Park and sure enough, there was a statute of the adventurous dude himself! We laughed because the locals pronounce their town’s name like “Oliver” so we did not make the connection to dear Simon Bolivar. We decided to at least try to get out of Missouri today. As it turned out it did take all day to get to Nebraska via Iowa! I must digress and apologize for my ignorance regarding the Quakers. We passed through another small community and were informed that these are Amish. A picture says a thousand words…..
The further we progressed north, the higher the terrain became. The vistas were astounding and we truly felt that we were in the “big” country. When you fly over the area you can see squares of green, brown and tan for hundreds of miles but when you are on the ground the perspective is so completely different that you come to understand just how vast these corn and soybean farms are. Each farm grew their crops right up to the house or outbuilding. It is amazing that every inch of available ground is planted.
We finally got to Kansas City where we visited the Harley Davidson Final Assembly Plant. We were asked to get a picture or two of Goober and Me. So we complied at the gift shop. It was awesome and John has already found a new bike! Another kind lady directed us to the best Bar-B-Que place in the world. We had learned earlier that the stockyards in Kansas City had closed in 1991 and that instead of steak houses, Bar-B-Que has taken its place as “the best of”. We were disappointed that we were not able to go to the stockyards, but enjoyed our meal. The bar-b-que is quite different from the Southern variety. There is no pulled pork. They serve Burnt Ends Brisket bits and Smoked Sausage, all with bar-b-que sauce. It was tasty, but I wasn’t able to eat the burnt parts. Ugh. The beans were tasty and made up for the blackened beef ends.
Another weird thing about Missouri is that they must have run out of numbers for their county roads because they turned to letters. So it was Exit T or Exit DD or Road A. Mindblowing.
This is truly the heartland of America and we should really stop with this blue state/red state and come together as America again and try to work through all these seemingly insurmountable obstacles. We saw plenty of Yankee ingenuity in the windmills and solar panels in the vast farmland of the Missouri Valley.
We finally arrived in Council Bluffs, Iowa and traveled across the Missouri River into Nebraska, Omaha, to be exact. We stopped for gas and asked the pertinent questions; where do you buy beer and wine and where is the nearest Holiday Inn Express? The young men in the store were so helpful and educated us about Nebraska. There are no blue laws and you can buy liquor, beer, wine and pharmaceuticals in any Wal-mart or Walgreens but had to actually go to the Walgreen’s to get directions to the nearest hotel, which ended up being the Hilton Garden Inn, which we love because it has a restaurant and we don’t have to go off campus to eat.
That is what has become so obvious to us on this trip. We don’t mind driving 7 – 8 hours with breaks of course, but when we get to the end, we don’t want to go out.