Chapter 20

Kansas City is probably the easiest city to drive and get around (at least so far). Every place we needed to go wasn't far away, there was never any traffic, the streets are wide, and we never paid to park --even in a garage!
I tried to get some photos of all the lawns.

Our first stop today was Union Station. It's a huge old, restored train station. We walked over the tracks (as a coal train ran under us) and into the grand station. It had fallen into disrepair, but was recently remodeled. We liked the displays about its history.

Next we went to 18th and Vine, an easy short drive away. This was the center of African American life in Kansas City, when there were restrictive housing codes. There are two museums under one roof there.

First, we went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which told the history of the Negro Leagues. It had a small field in the center, with statues of players, and chronological exhibits all around, with uniforms, posters, quotes, artifacts and all kinds of interesting items.

Just across the lobby is the American Jazz Museum. This has displays about jazz, focusing on Kansas City, but including much more. There were displays about famous artists, like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Duke Ellington. Collections of photographs, sheet music, and posters from the height of jazz's popularity create context for historic artifacts.

It has its own jazz club (no concert at 10:00 on Wednesday morning) with artifacts displayed in the tables.

Next, a short, easy drive away, we went to the National World War I Museum. This was originally built in the 1920s as a memorial, and closed in the 1990s, and then reopened in 2006 as a much -expanded museum. It had so many artifacts! There were a lot of guns, but interesting things too.

There was a model of a trench, and one of a crater left from an artillery shell. There were lots of uniforms, and posters, howitzers, and the entire month by month history of the war, with many quotations.

Outside and upstairs, there were displays of posters and murals.

We could have stayed at any of these museums all day, but we knew we had to manage our time, and get going for our next stop.

We crossed into Kansas (never been to that state before), and only an hour away is Topeka, the state capital.
This capitol was very elaborate, with lots of carving and extra details everywhere. It also had murals of Kansas history.
Fun Fact: this is the only capitol dome in the US where ordinary people can climb up and walk around the balcony. Not So Fun Fact: we didn't learn that until after we left Topeka. Also, the statue on the top is new, Kansa, whose arrow points to the North Star.

We had one more stop in Topeka, at Monroe Elementary School, which was the center of the famous Brown Vs The Board of Education court case about desegregation, and is now a small museum.

After that we had a 2.5 hour drive to Lincoln, Nebraska. We passed the time reading the Omaha World Herald, enjoying stories like " Car wash still stands as recall effort moves ahead", and learning about crime in Omaha.

Phone service was on again, off again, but our motel happened to be right on the small highway we drove in on, and we found an enjoyable "progressive Mexican" restaurant for dinner.