Horizontal vs. Vertical

Driving across Kansas was just how I remember the prairies from my youth: it's flat and hot and that flat goes on forever and the hot makes even the cows cower for shade under what little shelter they can find.
The sky gets bigger, and each silo looks like a skyscraper. It's as if the world is all ground, with very little figure in it.

One thing that was different was the giant wind farms we saw: prairie power!

The funny thing was, my ears kept popping as we approached Colorado, and I realized that although the world seemed flat, we were actually travelling on an incline. Then, suddenly, there they were: the Rockies!

From that point on, everything seemed pretty vertical. I didn't realize you could get vertigo from looking up! First stop: the Beaver Meadows visitor center (designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright)

Then we pitched our tent at Moraine Campsite:

We were ready for adventure, our first hike to Glacier Gorge. 

KC MO

It's no accident we stopped here, home of my dear sister and her family. We've always enjoyed our visits to KC but this time, both Leo and I had a couple of firsts.

I had a chance to attend my first professional level soccer game: Sporting KC vs. Chivas USA.

I was glad Leo was able to translate all the hand gestures and sometimes  puzzling reactions from the crowd. Now I think I know how he feels when we go to string quartet concerts....

It was quite a dramatic game actually, with more body contact than is typical. I expected there would be lots of hot dogs, but didn't expect to see so many on the field. Sporting KC was on a 9-game winning streak, but it looked like Chivas would take the game at 1-0. Then, during injury time Omar Bravo scored a goal for Kansas in the 92nd minute. Watch the highlights here! Needless to say, Bravo got a standing ovation!

The next day Leo and Dave took the kids to Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun, and Leo had the chance to experience his first rollercoaster  (no photo available....)

Gretchen and I enjoyed a day at the Nelson Atkins Museum 

where we looked at art, and watched other people look at art....

This new sculpture by Roxy Paine was an impressive work of art, which turned out to resemble some of the works of nature we would see in the Rocky Mountain Park.

The cousins had a fabulous time as usual. The visit concluded with their latest theatrical production, "My Parents Died In a Car Crash, and My Sister Is All I Have Left: The Musical." Video not available (yet!)

Farewell KC, farewell cousins, and thanks for a fabulous visit!

Charmed by St. Louis

We hadn't really intended to linger in St. Louis, but are very glad we did. 

The City Garden is a whimsical park/museum with delights both sculptural, botanical, and aquatic!

Then it was on to the City Museum, a misnomer if ever there was one. Or is it a brilliant attempt to reclaim the term museum? http://www.citymuseum.org/home.asp

The City Museum is part playground, part recycling dump, part sculpture garden; a fantastical interactive installation made entirely of recycled materials--from  junked vehicles to abandoned sections of buildings to boilerplates from industrial plumbing. This is where photos come in really handy: 

Farewell, St. Louis, you showed us a great time; now we're goin' to Kansas City!

Westward Expansion

St. Louis, the Gateway to the West, was a great place for us to launch our own westward expansion.
The arch, symbolizing the historic voyage of Lewis and Clark, was as impressive by day.....

as it was by night!

We stayed at the Drury Plaza Inn, only yards from this amazing landmark. The hotel itself  turned out to be a historic building, once the hub of the fur trade in St. Louis.

Check out those large windows, which offered particularly good light for viewing the beaver furs that were traded here up until the 1950s. More on this fascinating history (with a cameo role by French Canadians!) here:
http://mdc.mo.gov/conmag/1997/02/beavers-and-boomtown-remembering-st-louis-fur-trade?page=0,0

A diorama featuring Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, commemorated their historic voyage in the hotel lobby:

Perhaps emboldened by the help we had been receiving from our GPS, 

Leo was sure he could help with directions....

 

The hotel offered free snacks and drinks at their "kickback" hour. When we arrived around 5:00 p.m. on Thursday night, the lobby was a hotbed of activity with what seemed like hundreds of hungry Cardinals fans milling around, all wearing the same shirt with the name of some guy named Pujols on the back. Everyone was waiting to see if the game would be on or be rained out. It looked like it would be off....it was pouring with rain. But we decided to venture out anyway to visit the Arch.

Although it's hard to believe from looking at it, you can actually travel up to the top and enjoy a spectacular view of the city. We checked in on the game; turns out, they were playing ball after all....

Stay tuned as we explore the Core of St. Louis, the City Garden and the City Museum, all in the shadow of the magnificent Gateway Arch.

On the Road

Next stop: St. Louis
 
Interesting view from the Interstate: giant white crosses, Jesus billboards and pro-life messages; sex toy superstores, $29 hotels and plenty of fireworks outlets.  God Bless America!

We stopped in Mansfield, Ohio at a no-frills Travelodge. Were they trying to tell us something?

Life in the City

Rock City, that is....

When in Olean, NY, be sure to visit this quite amazing geological formation, the largest quartz conglomerate in the world. Apparently it's a prehistoric ocean floor bed that survived many geological catastrophes. Imagine a huge expanse of rock, cut into pieces, with all manner of crevices, caves and tiny passage ways (one aptly labeled "Fat Man's Squeeze), it's also a great place for a 9-year-old boy to get lost and only mildy freak out his parents.

Please watch your step

Do not lean on rock

Rock on!!!

Olean, NY reminded me of the town in Groundhog Day; it has the same open, wholesome feeling, but also a preoccupation with small rodents. Apparently the squirrel is the town symbol, and there were dozens of decorated giant squirrels, sponsored by local businesses.

On trips and technology

So, don't get me wrong. I'm definitely very excited about this trip. It's a version of several extended roadtrips my family of origin took when I was a child. We did not camp, however; my bones were much younger; and I don't believe we were gone for an entire month. (I wish I could ask my mother how she felt about the trip.) I do remember my father's mantra: put down the comic books and look at the Rockies. In those days, we recorded the trip the old-fashioned way, with a journal. The comic books have been replaced with digital doo-dads, which will no doubt interfere at times with what's going on outside the windows. The difference is I may have to impose a limit on my own screen time!

There does seem to be something a bit perverse about heading off into the wilderness loaded for bear (as it were) with technological devices. We borrowed a GPS from a friend and that has been plenty of entertainment for Leo and me; the kids watched a movie on our computer and listened to their iPod while we travelled through the beautiful rolling hills of southwestern New York State. Travel boredom? No problem. We even managed to squeeze in a game of 20 questions, and pulled out some actual maps as we reviewed some basic geography with the kids. No, we will not be passing through Rhode Island.

I imagine that the more beautiful the scenery becomes the less I will want to be behind a screen.....

Some highlights of Day 1 were lunch in Schenectady, my mother's home town; and passing through Oneonta, NY where my mother had a brief and somewhat scandalous college career at Hartwick College before transferring to Eastman School of Music. That was tricky to explain to the kids....

We were intrigued by the place names, and could imagine a record of contact between Old World and New in the towns that remain: Owego, Oneonta, Elmira all mixed up with Cornell and Binghamton. We spent the night in Bath, New York at a pleasant Microtel with no mosquitoes and (I'm hoping) no bed bugs either.

Today we are headed to visit Leo's sister and view the so-called eighth wonder of the world, in Olean, NY:
Rock City Park: http://www.rockcitypark.com/