Americana Travels, Pt 14: Flagstaff to Las Vegas

Americana Travels, Pt 14: Flagstaff to Las Vegas

May 25^th, 2012 – The alarm screamed its banshee wail through my skull at a quarter after five in the morning. The sun was trying its best to push open the blinds to expose the hard lines of the hotel room. The wind was howling like I did that time I kicked the ottoman barefoot in the middle of the night. The last day of travel was upon us and the elements were putting up a fight.

After brushing the crusties out of my eyes, I was cracking my knuckles and sneering at the sky.

We got dressed, prepped our travel jugs of coffee, and loaded up Harmony for the last leg . . . Flagstaff, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. The wind was particularly gnarly this morning and cold on top of that. We were on the road twenty minutes before six, heads down, and trucking west on the I-40 for the town of Williams, Arizona. We had a few stops to make before we got to The Vegas, and this first one was a treat. We got off the freeway and headed north, fifty-one miles from the Grand Canyon, and along the most boring stretch of land we’d encountered on the two week journey. The first part of it wasn’t so bad, replicating the terrain of Flagstaff with its towering pines and massive hills, but then that all faded and we were cruising through a desert landscape of low brush and wide open fields of nothing. And the most amazing part of this? People lived out here!

About twenty-eight miles from the freeway, we arrived at our destination . . . Bed Rock City, Amusement Park of The Flintstones! We paid ten dollars for our admission and began wandering through the park, a collection of huts and “life size” figures of the characters of The Flintstones. It was all outside and the wind was blowing hard, in some cases so hard that I had trouble breathing . . . I had to tuck my head down or turn in another direction to catch a lung full of air. And, it was cold!

We spent a good half hour walking across this acre or so of cartoon sadness. I say sadness coz’ the place was in such disrepair that these characters that we grew up with seemed to be fading away from memory as we stood there. To call the place an amusement park was a stretch in that there were no rides, but it was an amusement park in the literal sense . . . it was a park, it was amusing, it was a place where kids of three years old to twelve, or so, could run around and be crazy. Of course, those kids would have to know who The Flintstones were in the first place; otherwise, this is just a bizarre location in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona that is withering away into nostalgia. Kids of today would probably look at this park and just shrug. Maybe that’s me being cynical, but think about it . . .

Anyway, we left The Flintstones Family and went back towards the I-40. The road seemed to fly right by this time, and wasn’t nearly as dreadful as I was expecting in comparison to the ride up. About a half hour later, we were back on the freeway, driving west, and to the last of the Original Twelve Sites of the Americana Road Trip 2012. After making a pit stop, we continued down the old Route 66, which I’ll tell you . . . I’m pretty tired of reading or hearing about . . . the entire trek we took seemed to follow the Historical Route 66 to some point. We continued down Route 66 for about an hour, listening to another Jim Gaffigan CD (was mildly amusing), and arrived at Giganticus Headicus, a fifteen foot green Easter Island head. He was rad! I didn’t mind the hour long drive down Route 66 once I saw this guy and got to take pictures with him!

A few minutes later, we were behind the wheel again, heading towards Kingman, Arizona . . . a town tucked in the north western deserts of Arizona. A town that Mrs. Pope and I, even though we discussed it for about an hour, still have no rational explanation as to why it exists. From what I remember, the town was founded to supply some of the local mining towns, like Oatman, Arizona . . . but those mines have long closed or dried up, so . . . why does Kingman still exist? Someone needs to get back to us on that one. While in Kingman, though, we found the absolute best place in the world to play a vinyl LP. Here’s the site at 3,333 feet above sea level . . . and since a vinyl LP is typically played at 33 1/3 rpm, just imagine the sonic quality of your vinyl recordings if they’re played at this site!

I know . . . Pope, you’re weird. I get that a lot. I’m comfortable with it.

About an hour and a half later, we were driving along the northbound 93 towards Las Vegas. This run was a desolate and fairly boring trek, but the terrain was broken up by a great swathe cut into the face of the earth . . . the Colorado River valley arose to the left and soon, the reflections of Lake Mead greeted us. We never crossed Hoover Dam, which was a damn shame; instead we were rerouted through Boulder City and then dropped into Henderson, Nevada. I had forgotten that traffic no longer goes over the Hoover like it used to for generations . . . thanks you bomb loving idiots! You took away another one of those great freedoms we used to have in America . . . it ranks right up there with not having to take my shoes off before marching through a security point at the airport. You bastards. We battled wind and traffic . . . the wind, as you can see from the attached photo, was exceptionally rough, kicking up walls of sand, dirt, and grit (not the good kind of grit, Mrs. Pope says) and made visibility difficult.

Just before 12:30pm, we pulled up to our hotel in Las Vegas, the last stop along the Great Americana Road Trip of 2012! This is where we’ll have to leave you good readers, for as you surely know, what happens in Vegas and all, however, Mrs. Pope will have a post script a little later as we still have some oddities in Vegas to check out . . . so stay tuned.

Pope

Quote of the Day: “Holy crap . . . it’s really f@cking windy!”

Americana Travels, Pt 13: Albuquerque to Flagstaff

Americana Travels, Pt 13: Albuquerque to Flagstaff

May 24^th, 2012 – I woke up around 8:30am, took care of my end of things, and let Mrs. Pope sleep until whenever. I cleared some emails, corresponded with customers, checked in with the Facebook crowd, texted a few folk, and then listened to some tunes to get my head in the game for a long road day. Hours-wise, today was scheduled to be a relative cakewalk in comparison to the Oklahoma City/Albuquerque run, but there was still a lot to be seen and a lot of road to cover. Once Mrs. Pope woke up, she checked the weather and informed me that there was a high wind advisory going on for the next couple of days . . . so the final legs of this two week journey was about to give the forearms a workout.

At some point, I can’t remember the exact time; we had checked out of the hotel and were en route to a gluten-free bakery in northern Albuquerque. We arrived at the Great Harvest Bread Company, and Mrs. Pope got herself a loaf of pumpernickel bread, a flavor that she hasn’t consumed since well before the whole gluten allergy thing first came to light. We also picked up some dog biscuits for Mongo (yeah, really missing the dude now). We then fueled up and got some Starbuck’s before we headed to breakfast/lunch. We pulled into a place called Jason’s Deli that was hugging the I-40, so this was a logistically advantageous place to have a bite. Plus, this place has a gluten-free menu, so for those keeping score at home, the Weary Road Travelers 2, road nothing. Mrs. Pope had informed me that she and our buddy Wilton had eaten at this place while she was in Georgia last year and that the Muffaletta sandwich was good and insane in size. Eh . . . yeah. Woulda’ been a better sandwich if the bread was softer. Not quite sure why they decided to toast the bread. Looks like I need Muffaletta Replacement Therapy. New Orleans trip, anyone?

From there, we tracked down a couple of oddity sites in Albuquerque. The first was a giant arrow in the parking lot of a strip mall. I tried to angle the photo so that it looked like it was impaling a small car. It probably would have come across better if I took the time to jump up and down on the roof of the car to give it that authentic crinkled and damaged appearance. Sorry I didn’t commit to the bit better than this . . . I’ve failed you, dear readers. After the giant arrow, we drove through a residential section of town and found a high heeled shoe tree. We actually drove past the house the first time because we were looking for something different, but when we turned around and saw this thing, we kinda’ slapped ourselves for missing it in the first place. I mean, how obvious is this thing? And yes, someone actually took the time to nail high heeled shoes all the way to the top. Crazy.

Mrs. Pope continued piloting us out of Albuquerque and towards our night’s residence of Flagstaff, Arizona. We were looking at about five hours of desert driving and the wind was kicking up pretty good by this time. We cruised along the westbound I-40 for a couple of hours, watching huge fields of ranch land pass by, the occasion herd of cow look up from its lunch, and passing slower moving traffic while doing our best to hang around the speed limit. We had finished listening to The Innocent the day before while en route from Oklahoma City, so we spent a lot of this trek listening to CD’s from comedians. The first one on this leg was Jerry Seinfeld, and though I found his sitcom about nothing to be hilarious, this stand up performance was near genius. There’s a rhythm to good comedians and Seinfeld is a master, so many times I sat in the co-pilots chair giggling and marveling at the dudes timing. After that, we listened to another John Pinette disc as we pulled into Gallup, New Mexico for a pit stop.

I took over the wheel duties at Gallup and continued the steady march west across the I-40. The wind was pushing me all over the place, but it still didn’t seem as bad as the day before when we were plowing into that headwind all day. We continued listening to John Pinette as we made our way into Arizona and pulled into the Petrified Forest State Park. We paid our $10 admission and were warned not to remove any pieces of rock, pottery, or petrified tree. I looked at the ranger with the thought of, ‘Who would do such a thing anyway?’, but realized a split second later; the world is made up of people who think they’re entitled to do whatever the hell they want and yada yada yada. Me, Pope, on my soapbox once again. Anyway, we drove a little bit through the Painted Desert, and folks, this is one of those places that you want to get to early and spend all day exploring. The scenery is majestic and every view point was breath taking. We continued down the road and stopped at the ruins of the Puerco Pueblo.

This site was amazing in that . . . we were in the middle of nowhere and people once lived here! Something like eighteen families once lived on this foreboding site of desert. The Puerco River once ran through the land, but even at its highest point, I couldn’t imagine the land ever being fertile enough for crops and the survival of man. It’s inhospitable land. It’s windy. It’s dry. It’s hot. It’s cold. The really cool thing to check out at this site, though, is the petroglyphs etched into the rocks a few feet from the ruined pueblo. A little while after we were done soaking in the history, we hopped back in the rig and decided that we should get back to our original quest and save the remaining portion (twenty-something miles) of the Petrified Forest for a later vacation, so . . . we got back on the I-40 and drove towards the setting sun. By the way, John Pinette . . . funny. We cracked up hard on this disc, as well, however, neither of us almost died this time. Mrs. Pope doesn’t agree with me . . . she thinks John Pinette is the funniest comic ever and anything I say is dumb. So there.

We pulled into the town of Holbrook, Arizona, and found a creepy and reportedly haunted Courthouse. The place was closed for the day, so we hopped out and took some photos of the outside. Yeah . . . the place was creepy in real life and after looking at the photos again, I could swear that I see the draperies move from time to time. Just for the record, I’m never going back there . . . my skin was crawling as I walked up the walkway . . . and I’ll never be able to confirm any ghostly inhabitants, though, I’m pretty sure this place is the site of a Hell Mouth. From there, we found Geronimo, the World’s Largest Petrified Tree . . . so we stopped to take a picture of the monolith.

Twenty some odd miles later, we were pulling into Winslow, Arizona . . . and, I’m sure most of you know why. For those who don’t, there’s an Eagles song called “Take It Easy” that contains the now famous line of “Standing on a corner of Winslow, Arizona . . . “, and once you’ve heard the song a time or two, you can’t get it out of your freakin’ skull. So, we pulled up to this corner and to our surprise, there was a statue, a mural, and a flatbed Ford, my Lord (no blonde stoppin’ to check me out, though) all constructed to commemorate the site. We rambled up to the corner and there was another cross country trekkin’ family there snapping some photos, so we got them to take a picture of us. And, naturally, I was humming “Take It Easy” for the next two hours.

                                Mrs. Pope decides to take a short nap between stops

We eventually got back on the freeway, sun blasting my eyes into burnt husks, and listened to the last comic CD of the day, Billy Gardell . . . you know the guy. He plays Mike on the sitcom, Mike & Molly . . . this guy killed me. Damn near drove the car into a ditch . . . twice. A few miles later, we pulled off on Twin Arrows Drive (or something along those lines) and tried to snap some photos of these two giant arrows as the sun had already tucked itself behind a distant mountain.

At about 8:30pm, a full twelve hours after I dragged my sorry ass out of bed, we were checking into the Residence Inn of Flagstaff. We had just traveled some ridiculous amount of miles . . . not so much for the day, but for this entire trip. We have one more day, well . . . that’s not totally true, there’s still Vegas, but you get where I’m going. We saw a ton of stuff and wandered around parts of the country that I never thought we would. And here we are, fighting off the wind and a chill in the air as we lug all of our gear into our Flagstaff room.

We grabbed a quick bite at Picazzo’s Pizzaria, one of our favorite joints in Arizona because they not only have gluten-free pizza, but gluten-free beer . . . Yay! Mrs. Pope had her usual pizza (perhaps it had cheese and sausage and more cheese) and a couple of pints of beer, while I drank cucumber water and had a salad. Ha! Got you there . . . while I did have the cucumber water, I had an order of buffalo wings that made my lips go numb. My hair was sweating. I aged twelve years in the hour that I sat there shoveling these toxic critters down my throat . . . and I’d do again in a minute!

We’re calling it early and hitting the road as the sun comes up, so this blog will be posted on Friday . . . which is today, since I’m just now finishing it.

Pope

Quote of the Day: “Dude . . . I’m from California. Get the f@ck out of my way!”  --  Mrs. Pope

Americana Travels, Pt 12: Oklahoma City to Albuquerque

May 23^th, 2012 – Hi everyone, Mrs. Pope here. I’m doing the blog tonight, since Pope just spent the last nine hours driving us across three states – well done, honey. We’ve settled into a nice rhythm of me driving around the cities with my highly skilled ability to make hair-pin turns whenever needed and my exceptional parallel parking abilities, especially under pressure (she says modestly), and Pope driving on the highways with his lack of lead-footed-ness and ability to be completely entertained by any type of music playing on the CD. We are a good team.

Today was monumentally uneventful. Knowing that we had a solid 8 hours and 45 minute drive from hotel to hotel today, not counting stops or unforeseen events, we did not mess around. Up at 7am (cough cough 7:30 cough cough for Mrs. Pope), we took advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel, showered and dressed, loaded the car, gassed up, Starbuck’ed up, and hit the road. We scheduled no site-seeing stops, which was easy enough since we saw all the best stuff on the East-bound trek. We made several stops for gas, coffee, and snacks, and pulled into our hotel parking lot in Albuquerque nine hours later. Did I mention the 30 mph winds, pretty much the whole way?  Yeesh. It is unreal how loud they are howling as I type this. We might be staying in tonight.

One interesting thing about road tripping that we have noticed so far is that eating gets pushed pretty low down on the priority list. Yesterday, after the leftover BBQ for breakfast, all Pope and I ate the rest of the day were a few handfuls of gluten-free pretzels and two pieces of candy – seriously, all day. Yeah, we were hungry when we went to bed, but it wasn’t a high enough priority for us to make an effort to do anything about. Gas, coffee, and sleep are the priorities. Today we had a big, solid breakfast (thank you Springhill Suites Oklahoma City) and a drive-through snack somewhere by some gas station a few hours ago. Yesterday was Day 11 of this trip and I would say that was the fourth day this trip that eating really did not happen. And keep in mind we are doing what some would consider a wimpy man’s road trip, trying to limit our number of hours behind the wheel to 6-7, ideally.  I think I can have some glimmer of understanding why truck stops are known for burgers, fried chicken, soda, and coffee. It’s short-term immediate survival trumping long-term health. Pope and I quickly discovered on Day Two that our usual amount of coffee in a given day was not going to cut it. I have always limited myself to one Trenta (that’s about 30 ounces) iced coffee from Starbucks a day, and I really keep it to 3-4 per week most of the time – but NEVER more than one Trenta in a day. Road tripping? Yeah, when my head is bobbing at 4pm and I’m trying not to doze while driving, and we still have 200 miles to go – caffeine consumption worries be damned! I am much more worried at that point about falling asleep behind the wheel. Pope and I have averaged double our usual daily intake of coffee. Thank God this trip will be over in another few days – I don’t think our livers and kidneys could handle much more.

We only got about five hours of sleep last night, so we are bleary-eyed and tired, especially poor Pope who hammered through the driving. We wish you all a good night, and will be back tomorrow. 

Mrs. Pope

Quote of the Day: "No, they're not waiting for a waffle. They're simply staring at the food."

Americana Travels, Pt 11: Springfield to Oklahoma City

Americana Travels, Pt 11: Springfield to Oklahoma City

May 22^th, 2012 – We kinda’ leisurely strolled out of our massive suite in Springfield, Missouri this morning. We utilized both wings of the suite to its fullest by showering in separate rooms at the same time. We then reheated the leftover BBQ from Gates in Kansas City for breakfast, a food type that was certainly better the first time around, though satisfied the hunger enough to get us on the road.

We were on the road a little before noon and fueled up Harmony the Honda, and then made the short trek to one of the Original Twelve sites that we had almost missed. Right up the road from our hotel was the World’s Largest Fork! I know, right? How does one miss the World’s Largest Fork?!? We got there and I snapped a photo of Mrs. Pope posing next to the monstrosity. This guy was damn cool, and the team that crafted this fork did a nice job. It looked real authentic and one could actually imagine a giant hand reaching down from the heaven’s to pluck this sucker up, spin some spaghetti around the prongs, and hoist it to some unseen mouth.

We then made our way to a nearby Starbuck’s for our own fuel . . . a lot of miles were going on the car today, which meant a lot of windshield time. Gotta’ have juice in the blood stream or we weren’t gonna make it. A few minutes after getting our coffees and with Pope already punchy and yammering away about Foo-Kee Doo-Kee or something ridiculous like that, we drove a little out of our way to go to a particular cupcake shop, because it had a very special name . . . ! We then proceeded to the 65 South and made our way to Branson, Missouri.

We drove through another scenic portion of the state (and country), rolling past some amazing geological formations, zipping past Ozark on to Branson. The Ozark region of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas is gorgeous terrain. If ones not careful, one might start fantasizing about living amongst these massive trees and rolling hills. I’m not sure what time it was when we pulled off the freeway, but we pulled into Branson and drove through this town that I can only describe as a little mountain town working really hard to be the next Vegas. We found out where 80’s comedian icon, Yakov Smirnoff disappeared to. I guess he decided it was better to be a big fish in a little pond versus the other way around. The whole town kinda’ had that feel to it. Almost like it was trying too hard, but not trying hard enough . . . y’know? We eventually pulled up to the Amish Country Store that we had been trying to locate, and wandered through the narrow aisles of the place for probably close to an hour. We picked up some goodies for ourselves, family, and friends and ultimately did our part to support the Amish. Interestingly enough, this store wasn’t a hundred percent Amish owned and run, or whatever. It turns out that the store was owned by another group of folks who supported the Amish by hosting a ton of their manufactured wares in the store. In all, though . . . cool place with a huge selection of items that I’d never seen before.

On the way out of Branson, we loaded up on some more coffee at the local Starbuck’s and set a course for Gateway, Arkansas. This was a very scenic part of the travels as we weaved and wound through a State Park and across bridges spanning over lakes. If I hadn’t been driving the route, I wouldn’t have believed this area even existed. All of the weaving roads started to make Mrs. Pope a little motion sick, she described it as rolling down a hill in a hamster ball . . . so I tried to cool it with the speeds and erratic turns. I rocked out to disc five of my Travel Playlist and was treated to a wonderful mixture of Led Zeppelin, Modern Day Moonshine, CSN&Y, Dala, and Edie Brickell. Maybe it was my crooning and caterwauling that was making Mrs. Pope motion sick opposed to the winding roads.  Can’t blame her if it did . . . I was feeling a little queasy after my performance as well.

After emerging from the  . . . Sorry, news announcement: The L.A. Kings are going to the Stanley Cup Finals!!! WOOO-YEAH!!!

After emerging from the Roaring River State Park, we crossed over the Arkansas state line and a few minutes later, into Gateway, Arkansas . . . population 116. I shiver when I see a town population that low. I’ve just seen way too many horror movies, I guess. Anyway, the subject of our next stop would make a perfectly terrifying serial killer, if filmed the right way. Meet Jack, The Goofy Bunny Rabbit. He lives in someone’s yard and scares the hell out of little children. After driving on, yet another, winding road, we found this guy, pulled to the side of the road, and Mrs. Pope jumped out of the car to snap a photo. I warned her not to . . . again, too many horror movies start this way . . . but she did anyway, and captured a great image of the wild hare. Having to use the restroom pretty badly by this point, we pulled up to a tiny candy store a few yards up the road, used their facilities, ordered some candy for the use of said facilities, and then ran in horror as I guy with a old school hockey mask and revving chain saw burst from the back . . . just kidding. Well, all of it was true except for the chainsaw wielding psychopath.

The next part of the trek was arduous for me. We traveled for what felt like a half century, even going back in time, to get a view of a Popeye statue that was located in Springdale, Arkansas. So far, I’m not a big fan of the towns of Arkansas. I like the country areas just fine, but the towns bug me. I’m not even certain what route we took to get to this location, but we took it and battled traffic along one of the strips for what felt like an hour. We got to the Allen Canning Company and Mrs. Pope hiked from the parking lot to the front of the winking sailor to snap his photo. Not a bad shot, eh?

Mrs. Pope then relieved me of my piloting duties . . . probably coz’ I was arguing with Jack the Navigator too much . . . and we headed west to our next destination. We were headed for Siloam Springs where there was reported to be another Popeye statue at the corporate offices of Allen Canning Company. We got there and found no such statue. I did, however, receive some odd glances from the townsfolk of Siloam Springs as I scampered across the highway to find the plaster figure. Feeling slightly defeated, but more perturbed, we recalculated our route towards Oklahoma City and our final destination (ooooh, creepy how I worked that one in there . . . how y’all liking the horror themed episode of the blog?).

We made our way along the 412 through western Arkansas and into Oklahoma, and eventually through Tulsa. All of this was looking familiar since we had just been there a few days ago . . . or has it been a week already? Who knows . . . the point is, we’re on the stretch of the trek that will ultimately get us back home. But, for the time being, we still have a number of sites to get to. We picked up the I-44 and hightailed it towards Oklahoma City, watching the sun dip below the tree line along the freeway. We pulled off at Stroud, Oklahoma and tried to get a photo of this guys Alien Lawn Art, but it got a little too dark and the flash on the camera didn’t capture the freakish landscape to its fullest freakishness. We quickly turned around and got back on the road and aimed for our last site of the day in Arcadia, Oklahoma . . . The World’s Largest Pop Bottle.

This last site was situated on the old Highway 66, and along the road, we probably hit or clipped every flying bug between Stroud and Arcadia. At one point, it sounded like rain hitting the car. Totally gross, and I dread going to the car in the morning to clean off that windshield. Anyway, this last leg was totally worth the effort. We arrived at The World’s Largest Pop Bottle and were surprised to find a large store right behind it, dedicated to, not surprisingly, soda pop! We pulled into “Pops” as it was called at about 9:30pm and perused the store. The store was lined with soda bottles and the refrigerators were packed with bottles of carbonated beverages that I’d never heard of before, with a multitude of flavors that I never thought I’d see or be interested to taste. We loaded up a six pack of random flavors for later tastings. We may or may not inform you on the flavors that we like and dislike.

We finally pulled into the hotel at about 10:30pm and found our room waiting for us on the sixth floor. We checked in and I paced frantically for about an hour as I waited the results of the Kings game. My pacing resulted in a worn carpet, but that’s a small price for the opportunity to play for The Cup! Congratulations, boys!

And with that . . . I’m exhausted and tomorrow will be a gnarly drive. Where are we going tomorrow? You’ll just have to wait, happy reader . . . tomorrow will be an adventure all unto itself!

Pope

Quote of the Day: “I’ll Foo-Kee Doo-Kee your ass . . . I don’t know what that means, but it’s not good.”  --  Mrs. Pope

Americana Travels, Pt 10: Kansas City to Springfield

Americana Travels, Pt 10: Kansas City to Springfield

May 21^th, 2012 – They say it’s my birthday . . . is it your birthday, too?

 That’s pretty much the first thing I hear on this day every year. Mrs. Pope’s birthday usually brings with it a bunch of festivities, elves dancing and singing in squeaky harmony, fuzzy inanimate animals will come to life and join in the chorus, and there is peace on earth. Or . . . something like that.

However, this year started off a little different. I got up from a horrid night’s sleep and took a shower, only to find that I was standing under the spray of merely lukewarm water, at best. It seemed to get a bit warmer as the shower went on, or maybe I was just getting used to looking like a freshly plucked chicken. I shivered myself into my clothing and finished packing. Mrs. Pope, however, had no luck at all with the shower. It was colder water yet, and she hit the high points and moved on. Happy birthday!

Turns out the water was out in the entire building and Marriott management went ahead and comped us the equivalent of a free nights stay. Eh . . . it works. Woulda’ liked to see them throw in a basket of maple chews as well, but I’ll take what we can get.

We left the hotel a little after noon and marked the map with a big fat juicy red circle . . . Springfield, Missouri, we’re coming for you! But before we actually hit the open road for the little town nestled in the Ozarks of Missouri, we had to get some coffee from a place in southern Kansas City that claimed to have gluten-free edible delights. Navigator Jack was all over the place . . . he took us back across the state line to Kansas, then we got re-routed back to the Missouri side of things and he proceeded to take us through the yuppy part of downtown that we had hit the day before. About forty minutes later, the asinine route we took deposited us at the door step of One More Cup coffee shop. We ordered a couple of drinks and Mrs. Pope had two gluten-free donut holes. The drinks were good, but Mrs. Pope was less than pleased with donut holes . . . Happy birthday, once again.

The one thing that Mrs. Pope had requested for her birthday was to eat soul food or southern food, the definition didn’t need to be exact, but there had to be collard greens and peach cobbler in the future. Well, she had researched a little place in the town of Lee’s Summit, which was only a few miles south east of Kansas City, and basically en route to Springfield. After driving for about twenty minutes, we pulled into the parking lot of a huge strip mall . . . I mean, all of the box stores were there . . . Wal-mart, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, and this little soul food joint tucked in the corner. We pulled up to the building to see a giant construction dumpster parked in front and a closed sign in the window. Mrs. Pope almost started crying right then and there. I immediately knew that there was nothing that was going to stop us from having the desired food for lunch, so I grabbed my phone and started searching out soul food in the Springfield and Kansas City areas. Screw it . . . we were going back to Kansas City if we had to.

I called one of the places on Mrs. Pope’s list and talked with a vibrant lady on the other end of the line. I asked their hours to ensure that they were open, she said yes and that they closed at five. I confirmed the address, and then this sweet lady was trying to send us to their sister store in another part of town . . . . thinking that we were looking to take advantage of dinner rather than lunch. I asked her why she was trying to send us to another location . . . I liked her; I wanted to eat lunch with her! She laughed at the confusion of the whole situation and told us to git our butts down there for some food, and she’d take care of us. Mrs. Pope and I laughed about the whole exchange and then drove the seven or eight miles back to Kansas City to try this place out.

Niecie’s Restaurant was planted in the parking lot of a non-descript strip mall. We sat down and were immediately welcomed in as part of the family. We were actually the only folks in the restaurant at that time, though take-out orders were being placed and picked up while we were there. We ordered up a couple of drinks affectionately known as Pimp Juice or Fire Lemonade, and mmm mmmmm. That stuff was tasty! Mrs. Pope had the gravy smothered chicken with collard greens and cabbage, while I ordered up the catfish fillets. We chatted with the phone lady and waiter for the entire meal, explaining how all hell had broken loose and things weren’t working out for Mrs. Pope’s birthday, the comedy of errors that earmarked this day, and they asked questions like, “What are y’all doing vacationing in Missouri? What’s wrong with California?” My short answer to that was, “What’s wrong with Missouri?” Again . . . May is a lovely time to visit.

Then, Mrs. Pope’s crappy birthday luck reared its ugly head as we prepared for dessert. She ordered some peach cobbler, assured by all in the restaurant that it was the best we’ll eat for the rest of our lives <cough, cough . . . Ken’s Creekside . . . cough> and when our waiter went back to get the slice of southern goodness, he came back to inform us that there wasn’t any. Happy birthday, part three. She sullenly settled for something lemon, but it paled in comparison to everything that we had just eaten and the expectation that had built so feverishly within our bellies. But, in the end, this meal was fantastic in that it wasn’t just the food that took us to heaven, but the people that we got to share that hour with were down to earth, honest to goodness hard working folk . . . a small sampling of that southern kindness that we keep hearing about. It was awesome and I look forward to going back simply to spend time with those nice people.

We piled back into Harmony at some hour, hell . . . I stopped looking at the clock knowing that we were going to pull into Springfield late. We headed south on the 71, watching the miles fly by. About a half hour into the trek south, we started seeing roadside signs making mention of pecan farms and markets that would sell pecan tastiness. After pulling into one shop that was closed due to construction or poor economy, or both, we came to our first oddity site of the day. This one was in the town of Rich Hill and in the middle of their town was a giant Coal Shovel. Now, I was expecting to see something that looked like a snow shovel, y’know, a recognizable image, but no . . . no, this was a shovel in the sense of something that was attached to a crane or some other heavy machinery to pickup bucket loads of coal in short amounts of time. I thought the information board made mention of this bucket picking up seven hundred cubic tons? I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was a lot and if you look at the picture and try to imagine how many Mrs. Pope’s will fit in the World’s Largest Coal Shovel, you’ll get a better understanding of how massive this thing was.

As we were walking through this little park that also had a train car in it, we noticed a horse drawn buggy making its way up the main street. I was stunned, amazed, and every other adjective that works with gleeful disposition . . . it was an Amish family running some community errands, or at least, that was my assumption. We found out later that there is a Amish community tucked away on the outskirts of the town, and there were quite a few Amish communities scattered throughout Missouri. I’d only ever seen pictures, some documentary footage, the movie Witness, real distant and out of touch stuff regarding these folks, but here I was . . . watching the real action going down right in front of me. Mrs. Pope told me to stop staring . . . I hadn’t realized I was. I just felt like I was soaking in some Americana legend that I heard rumor of, but now was actually seeing in the flesh.

We got back on the road and began the search for one last oddity of the day . . . a giant Morel Mushroom. The thing was reported to be about thirty feet tall and lit up at night. Right . . . like what mushroom doesn’t light up at night? We drove down some desolate farm road that was littered with bullet riddled street signs and massive farm equipment doing donuts in barren fields. After driving for about five miles, we decided to turn around and continue towards the hotel. As we got on the freeway, we saw the fungal monstrosity on the opposite side of the freeway. The dude who gave us the directions left out a key point to the directions . . . turn down the frontage road was all he had to write and we would have been right there. Instead, we tried to snap some photos while we were driving by it. Eh . . . we saw it nonetheless.

A little over an hour later, we were pulling into Springfield. The sun was going down, but oddly enough, my energy wasn’t tapped. Despite the long drive and the lack of solid sleep, I was still doing well. I probably could have gone another hour with no problem. We checked into our room and were informed at the front desk that we were on the top floor and got a free upgrade to a two bedroom suite. We could sleep about three hours in every room and still not spend time in all of the space in this room. I jest, but I’m serious . . . really, I’m kidding, but you get where I’m going with this. This suite was huge! And how about that for a birthday present from Marriott?!?

We grabbed a quick bite to eat from an Italian joint that served; you guessed it, gluten-free pasta. Mrs. Pope had some alfredo sauce with shrimp and mushrooms, and I had the eggplant. Damn tasty and we were filled. We got back to the room and started the unwinding process that we do every night. And with that, I’m tuning out and turning off.

The road beckons!

Pope

Quote of the Day: “From this angle, President Lincoln looks like Cornelius from The Planet of the Apes.”

Americana Travels, Pt 9: Kansas City

Americana Travels, Pt 9: Kansas City

May 20^th, 2012 – We woke up in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City, Missouri. Huh . . . never once imagined that I’d say that.

Well, it was about 10:00am when we were awoken by the Olympic Hopscotch Trials on the floor above us. Judging by the rhythmic thumping, we’ve got gold in the bank. Today was a lazy day towards our site goals, and we kinda’ knew that going into it, hence the later start. Grab the zzz’s where you can and hope for the best.

We didn’t actually leave the hotel room until almost noon, so we were a bit peckish. The first stop of the day would be a crepe place that had gluten-free crepes. Crepes. That’s a funny word. If I had a crepe restaurant, I’d name it “Oh Crepe!” or “For Crepe’s Sake!” Say it loud, say it proud . . . CREPE! Anyway, the place was called Chez Elle and their specialty was the crepe, and all of their crepe flavors were in some French phrasing. We took one of the last seats on the front patio and figured out what flavors we were going to explore. I went in and ordered, and a few minutes later, Mrs. Pope was delivered her tomato, grilled onion, and spinach crepe, and I got one with mushrooms, spinach, grilled onions, artichokes, and provolone, and although the meal was all of three hundred calories, we were filled for the time being and fueled up enough to tackle downtown K.C.

We drove haphazardly through some worn out areas of downtown Kansas City, past some beautifully run down and dilapidated red brick buildings with train tracks running in between them. This part of town definitely had that old city vibe . . . lots of bats, rats, and stray cats running around in those darkened corners of late 1800’s architecture. It a cool little trip, though a little chilling as one could easily see the zombie apocalypse pandemic being born in these very same buildings. We turned a corner and mounted on the side of one of these buildings was the subject of our first quest . . . a monstrous cap gun! Dude’s . . . this sucker was huge and ornately detailed, reminding me of the time when I was all of two or three years old and my grandfather tried to put me on an airplane from New Jersey to San Diego strapped with a pair of these babies! Hehe . . . yeah, I may have been an adorable three year old, but even the airline didn’t take too kindly to me packing chromed out plastic cap gun heat.

We quickly weaved our way out of this little chunk of K.C. history and made our way south a bit. Next on the list was the upscale portion of downtown, the yuppier part of town, and before too long, we found a giant Bison skeleton propped up on a pedestal on 9^th Street. It wasn’t a real skeleton, at least, not real bones from a real bison . . . it was more like a sculpture. We parked the car, quite possibly illegally, and I hopped out of the car, ran across the street, and snapped a photo of the beasty. While I was scampering across the street, I notice a sundial hanging from the side of the wall . . . I made the mental note to get a shot of that guy while I was dodging oncoming traffic. Without any damages occurring to my being, I got pictures of both unique items and hopped back in the car. I was a little disappointed in the shot of the sundial because when I first saw it, there was some healthy cloud cover going on, so the sundial just looked like a weird plaque on the wall of a building. When I actually got the shot of the dial, the sun had come out of hiding and made the thing useful. The lesson I got from this expedition was a sundial works best when the sun is out.  

We zipped around the corner from the bison and sundial, and found another pretty cool oddity . . . a giant needle with thread and a button. Again, we parked the car in a questionable place (thank God it was Sunday) and ran across the street to get a photo of this sculpture paying homage to the Garment District of Kansas City. A few minutes later, we were back on the mean streets of K.C. and onto our next site. The final downtown proper site of this trip was a city block made of books. Apparently, this was the facade of the city library and where I thought it was going to be a bunch of books stacked on one another and to actual scale, what greeted us was so much cooler! Like books on a shelf, the façade was something like fifty feet tall and made up of twenty-five aptly chosen titles. Well, some were apt, some were head scratchers, and I bet if we had taken the time to investigate the title choices at greater length, they would have made more sense. In all though, this was a damn impressive site and as far as libraries go, only the New York City Library has impressed me more. Even the steps leading into the building were in the shape of books . . . talk about taking a theme and committing to it!

It was probably only a hair after 1:00pm . . . wait, let me refer to the sundial in the last part . . . yeah, actually about 1:30pm according to the sun, and we were en route to the 56 and an area of town that I thought had something to do with the local university. After looking back on the map, I don’t see any university over there, but what we did find was a giant statue of the Gate’s Man, a symbol of all that is good with K.C. BBQ. Kinda’ cool statue and one I wouldn’t mind having in my front yard . . . to hell with the neighbors! Anyway, after snapping a few photos of this really tall dude, we were on a mission to find some caffeine, and while en route to the local Starbuck’s we stumbled on one of the Original Twelve Sites of the road trip. Big Ass Shuttlecocks! On the massive sprawl on the lawn in front of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was a pair of shuttlecocks . . . c’mon and say it with me, its fun . . . shuttlecocks!

We parked on one of the streets adjacent to the park, hopped a short wall, and strolled through the nice tree lined paths to the massive lawn. I wandered to the first shuttlecock, struck a pose while Mrs. Pope snapped some outstanding shots, and we then wandered around the park a bit. We found a little building that was built as some sort of learning center, and it was all powered by solar energy. In fact, there was one room where you could test how much juice a human could generate in fifteen seconds in comparison to what the sun could generate. Here’s the deal . . . you push the red button, and three seconds later, you crank the hand crank as fast you possible can for fifteen seconds. Once that fifteen seconds is up, the screen in front of you reads out how much energy you created (mine was 91 something or others . . . which was fairly high in comparison to other visitors of the booth (moment of pride)), but a mere fraction of what the sun produces. It was completely fascinating.

From there we saw another sculpture that we thought looked pretty cool on a nearby hill, so I jogged up the hill and Mrs. Pope caught another picture of me in front of a giant chrome tree. Suddenly, my inner twelve year old took over . . . and I rolled down the hill! Yeah. Next time y’all get the opportunity to roll down a hill, please . . . for the love of God, do so! It only hurts for a sec and it’s more fun than you’ll remember having the last time you did such a thing.

From there, we walked back to the car and realized that we’d completed the day’s discoveries. Damn . . . that was a quick day! We drove to the Starbuck’s, went through the drive-thru and saw some cool wall art, then realized that we had no idea where we were going, so went inside to peruse the internet. We searched for an Old Town Area, but couldn’t figure out what was going on and really didn’t feel like doing a museum to kill the rest of the day. Then we remembered that we wanted to get massages to replace the one’s we had from a couple of days ago. The problem we were facing was that it was Sunday and most of the places were closed or closing soon. We finally found a spa that was open and could take us in the Westport area called Shine Spa. We were able to schedule a couple of massages, and at 4:30pm, I was getting a massage that completely made me forget the mediocre massage from Wichita.

As soon as we got out of our massages, Mrs. Pope and I looked at each other and in unison said, “Damn, I’m hungry.” We went to a BBQ place that we were told about called Oklahoma Joe’s and we were actually pretty excited to try this joint out. When we pulled up the restaurant, we saw that it was attached to a gas station and better yet, closed. So, we remembered that we had been next to Gate’s BBQ when we started this leg of the journey and decided to give that one a try. After making left and right turns all over the place, we eventually got the restaurant and over ordered. We both ordered the sampler plate, where one plate would probably have been enough for three people. Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, we took home a lot of food.

We got home at just about 8:00pm and began researching, plotting, and writing. The night is over. I’m ready to call it and get into the mindset of hitting the road for Springfield, Missouri.

See y’all on the road.

Pope

Quote of the Day:

Pope: “Ow, I hurt”

Mrs. Pope: “Why don’t you get up and stretch?”

Pope: “Coz’ my laziness has outweighed my pain.”