Tag: Kansas

Snow.

If you live in Kansas, Snow is the topic of the day. Last night, around halfway through an episode of White Collar on Netflix, it began to snow, big heavy flakes. It had been raining ALL DAY and frankly I was more worried about ice than excited about snow.

It’s hard to believe that Saturday we were taking an afternoon walk in the sun with light hoodies:

And now I’m bundled up wondering just how much we will get when all is said and done.

What really gets me is that yesterday everyone was panicking about blizzard conditions, school snow days, cancelled events, and such, and as you can see above… it’s really not a lot. From what I hear, people here in town love to make a big deal out of things, and this is par for the course. My friend who works at Wal-Mart tells me that every time snow is in the forecast, the masses come out to stockpile their pantries, shopping like it’s the end of the world. Like snow is going to bury their entire house and they won’t be able to come out until April. I’m not even a Kansan, I’m a Californian, and I am acknowledging while pretty, it’s nothing to really get worked up about. Unless it snows for days and days on end like it did this spring–that was a real blizzard condition.

All that said, I’m glad my sister, who flies in Saturday, will get to have a white Christmas–possibly for the first time since we moved to California from Colorado? Correct me if I’m wrong, Steph! I can’t wait for her to come!!

Also, the first half of our Christmas cards just went out (I brought them to work for the mailman to pick up). I hope when they arrive at their destinations, they aren’t soggy!

Kansas Day

Last Saturday (Jan 29) we celebrated Kansas’s 150th birthday.

To do this, we took a trip out to the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, where there are buffalo, you know, roaming. What could be more Kansas than driving around in a rusty old truck trying to find buffalo, right? (Or I suppose they could be bison, not sure what the difference is). Thanks to Paul’s trusty binoculars, from the lookout tower we could see some “little dots.” We think they were buffalo.

More important (and very telling of Kansas Culture) was the monument we saw at the wildlife refuge.

Image courtesy of a friend who thinks photo credits are lame.

You read that right–the first known white child to be born in McPherson county. He really had to work hard for that honor, you know.

Do you know when your state’s next big important birthday is?

One Day in Kansas City

Kansas City. Unless you’re from the area, you probably aren’t familiar with the wonders to be experienced here. It probably doesn’t register on most people’s radar as “Major US City” (it is near the bottom of the 40 largest list) but 500,000 people can’t be wrong, it’s a good place to live. Missouri must like to share, because like its other major city (St Louis), it bleeds across the state border into Kansas (especially when you take into account some of Kansas City’s nicer suburbs like Lenexa and Overland Park, which lie southwest of the city).

One of my favorite parts of KC is the Plaza, which holds several good memories for me, including the lighting of the city’s Christmas Lights the day after Thanksgiving 2005, some really good dates, and in my opinion the best Urban Outfitters clearance section I’ve ever shopped. The plaza has some of the region’s only locations for stores like Banana Republic, Restoration Hardware, and American Apparel, and restaurants like PF Chang’s. Sometimes its nice for a city slicker like me to spend a day among retail affluence (although I can’t really afford to shop in these kinds of places anyway)–its a nice break from the small-town life I now lead.

However, one interesting thing about this city (and other cities too, naturally), is how abruptly one goes from “good” neighborhood to “bad” neighborhood, back to “good” while driving in one direction without changing roads. On our way to The Plaza we experienced this shift at least five times in only a few miles.

The last thing I want to rave about is the City Market and the adjacent Steamboat Arabia museum. I was shown the City Market once on a tour but as it was the tail end of winter, it wasn’t open–all I got to see was the location and the empty stalls. Before our trip, however, I did a little more research, confirmed that it was open, and we had lunch at an Arabic restaurant. Mmmmm, schwarma ;) In addition to the Arabic restaurant and connected Arabic store and sidewalk market, there were Italian and African grocery stores and across the street two Asian Groceries (we did not make it to the Asian stores). The whole world in one city block!

The Steamboat museum came highly recommended by Doug’s parents and, contrary to my initial skepticism, it was amazing!! The story behind it was that in the 1830s a steamboat sunk and the boat and all its cargo were preserved underneath the claylike mud. Now that its been excavated, much of the cargo (an astonishing amount of stuff) is still like new! Very, very, interesting and indicative of pioneer life–literally everything that would have been sold in a fronteir general store was on this boat and has been preserved as a snapshot.