After a wonderful 11 days in St Louis, we moved on to Kansas City for what was meant to be eight days there.
In the end, we cut our time in Kansas City short by a day and so we missed out on a couple of things we’d hoped to do on our final day there.
We didn’t end up doing anything in KC that we thought was worth a full post in its own right, so here’s a roundup of everything that we did during our week there.
Where We Stayed
We’d been looking forward to this Airbnb we booked in Kansas City as it was a cute-looking loft apartment in a pretty good location near downtown.
Sure enough, it was cute and was in a good location that was walkable to some points of interest.
In addition to being a nice loft apartment, it was in a building with a rooftop area open to all residents. We sat up there on our first night watching lightning in the distance and looked forward to the week to come.
Unfortunately the stay ended up being far from ideal, but it wasn’t the fault of the Airbnb host. With it being an old building, the floors were very creaky. We could hear every footstep made by the person in the apartment above us.
Now, if it was just me and Shae then that wouldn’t have been a problem whatsoever because it wasn’t obnoxious thumping around. The problem was our dog Truffles. She has very strong feelings about noises above us, possibly stemming from squirrels, raccoons and possums running across our home’s metal roof back when we lived in Portsmouth, VA, then from the ridiculously loud people living in the apartment above us for the year before we set off on the road trip.
As a result, she ended up barking whenever the people above us moved around their apartment. They seemed to be up early in the morning and would also be up late at night. Again, they weren’t noisy – it was just their footsteps that Truffles would hear and subsequently bark.
Things got worse the last couple of days. A highway overpass was being built outside and the construction hadn’t been noisy at first. However, the last couple of days we were there, there was some kind of drilling or something taking place which shook the entire building every 30 minutes or so. It wasn’t just a gentle shake either – it was more like a five second earthquake every half hour. This was something else Truffles (understandably) hated and caused her to bark incessantly.
It got to the point that Shae and I couldn’t take it anymore. We had a Hilton free night certificate that was due to expire in a couple of weeks and no other plans to use it, so we left a day early and stopped in Omaha for the night instead. That was halfway to Sioux Falls which was our next destination and the Hilton Garden Inn we stayed at was a couple of minutes walk away from Kinkaider Brewing’s taproom in Omaha. It was a terrible use of the free night certificate seeing as you can use it at any property worldwide – including places like the Conrad Maldives – and we used it in Omaha(!), but it was better than letting it go to waste and it meant we had our first good night’s sleep in a week.
What We Did
Due to our lack of sleep, we didn’t have much energy to do much while in Kansas City, but we did explore a little.
Arabia Steamboat Museum
Kansas City is on the Missouri River and back in the day, steamboats went up and down the river. Many steamboats sunk in the river for various reasons and were lost to the sands (and sediments) of time, especially considering the river changed paths over time.
The Arabia Steamboat sank in 1856 and there were stories that many barrels of Kentucky bourbon had been on board. Past treasure hunters had found the wreckage of the steamboat but had little success recovering items and gave up. In 1988, three members of the Hawley family – David, Bob and Greg – discovered the wreckage buried under a cornfield. They convinced the landowner to let them excavate the boat and, after several months of work, they succeeded.
It’s incredible what they managed to recover from the Arabia. There were literally hundreds of thousands of items (but sadly no bourbon), with many of the artifacts on display in the museum. There are still items they’re working on preserving, but they’ve done a fantastic job with how they’ve displayed what was recovered. Here’s just a taste of what you can see at the Arabia Steamboat Museum:
City Market
The Arabia Steamboat Museum is in/next to City Market, a market with a grocer, restaurants, coffee shops, stores and more.
Missouri State Capital
On our way from St Louis to Kansas City, we stopped in Jefferson City. That’s because Jefferson City is Missouri’s state capital and so we wanted to stop by their Capitol building.
With it being a moving day, we had Truffles with us. I therefore waited outside with her while Shae did a quick self-guided tour of the Capitol building.
Independence
If Independence, MO sounds familiar for some reason, it might be because it was the starting point of the Oregon Trail and Santa Fe Trail. It’s about 20 minutes east of downtown Kansas City, so we stopped by there to check it out.
Our first stop was the National Frontier Trails Museum which Shae popped in to quickly. They had some fun t-shirts for sale in their gift shop.
In a field behind the Bingham-Waggoner Home, there’s a field with swales from the Santa Fe trail – wagon ruts that have since had grass growing over them. When the grass is a bit shorter it sounds like you can see the swales, but it was so high the day we visited that we couldn’t make out any of the swales.
Our next stop was downtown Independence to swing by the Harry S Truman National Historic Site visitor center. He was the 33rd President of the United States who oversaw the end of World War II and his hometown was Independence.
Our final stop that day was the nearby Truman House. It was built in 1867 and was lived in by President Truman from 1919 until he passed away in 1972. The National Park Service offers guided tours of the house, but we had Truffles with us that day and so just viewed it from the outside as pups aren’t allowed in the building.
Where We Ate & Drank
You can’t go to Kansas City and not have BBQ. We had several BBQ joints on our list of potential places to eat at and hoped to get to at least three of them. Unfortunately we only made it to two of them as the third place was where we planned to eat on our final night, but we left KC a day early.
Jack Stack Barbecue
The first BBQ we had was from Jack Stack which we ordered to go. We got their Roundup Family-Style Dinner to share, picking beef brisket, turkey, burnt ends and pork spare ribs, with sides of a baked potato, hickory pit beans and potato salad.
Their brisket wasn’t amazing compared to the brisket we’ve had from other BBQ joints around the country, but the ribs were very good, as were the sides.
Char Bar
One evening Shae and I went out to Char Bar and brought Truffles along with us as they have a large pet-friendly patio.
We decided to share two trays. One was a three meat tray; for our meats we went with burnt ends, turkey breast and beef brisket. For our second platter we got their half slab ribs tray.
Each tray came with two sides, so we got bacon-broccoli slaw and potato salad with one and BBQ pit beans and fries with the other. Rather than getting fries though, we ended up with beer-battered pickles which were enormous.
This was without doubt some of the best BBQ I’ve ever had. The brisket was incredibly tender and juicy, while the burnt ends were definitely the best I’ve tasted. The ribs were excellent too, while all the sides were tasty.
If we return to Kansas City in the future, I’d want to try some other BBQ joints, but I’d certainly want to head back to Char Bar as well.
City Market Café
We met up with some friends for breakfast at City Market Café one morning. Shae got an egg and cheese bagel, while I got a breakfast burrito which was pretty good.
[…] we ended up leaving Kansas City a night early, we enjoyed our time there and have added St Louis to our list of potential cities to […]