Ketchup Please

It’s time to play catch up. After a very busy week I’m happy to have a morning and afternoon to just relax. It’s still tempting to just stay in bed and sleep or maybe just watch TV all day. There is no such thing as a Saturday on this trip it seems. So we’ll see what I can get done today.

Early Saturday evening I said farewell to a great four days in Nebraska City and made the short drive to Kansas City, MO. Arriving in Missouri makes it the 20th state of the trip. TWENTY! That’s a pretty big checkpoint. After 14,000 miles I’m pretty closet o Michigan again and almost as far east as Baraga once again. Pretty soon it will be just the east coast to finish. It has gone by fast.

After a quiet drive on my birthday I arrived at the house of Stacy and David. Stacy and I share the same great aunt, but coming from different sides of the family. At least I believe that’s the connection, some of these connections get pretty complex. They have a beautiful house on the north side of Kansas City. David is a Kansas City police officer, so that’s one thing to check off my list, staying with a police officer. There are two kids running around the house, well, one is just crawling at this point. Trella is 9 months old and Brenden is 7 years old.

I was welcomed with some birthday balloons and a great dinner. We relaxed the evening away by playing some pool and the new Nintendo Wii. I’m pretty good at bowling on the Wii, but I’m terrible at the classic Super Mario Brothers. Yesterday included a great tour of the KC. It started with a drive through the city and an amazing brunch. We wandered through the shops at the plaza and met up with David’s brother Michael, who is a firefighter in the city. Michael and I checked out the National World War One Museum at Liberty Memorial. When in Kansas City check this out! It’s a fantastic museum with hundreds of interesting artifacts and features. The night closed with a great highlight, going 95 feet up in the air in the bucket of a Kansas City fire truck to get a skyline shot of the city.

P.S. Did you know that Missouri borders the most states? Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Tennessee all border Missouri. That’s 8 states, impressive!