Driving home…

Yip, home time…nothing much exciting to report about it…but after 9 ½ hours I was glad to be home!

This was a sad day for me, I think Kansas City was probably one of my favorite cities to visit, I kind of grew fond of the little city in our short three days there. I was very impressed and I give Kansas City an A+, which should actually carry a lot of weight because by now me and my co-pilot have taken in a lot of different cities, I think by now we can be considered experts. :)

Grrr...cone dude!

Welcome to Iowa!

Yip...world's LARGEST

Those are birds...I promise

Beatuiful!

Crowne Plaza…

We then made our way to the Crown Plaza which is where the Hallmark headquarters is.  It is a shopping center where I discovered the most colourful store EVER - the Crayola shop! I acted like a kid and tested colours and took pictures, and probably embarrassed my boyfriend. Oops…

I don't know that I get embarrassed anymore, I have pretty much accepted that my girlfriend is a five year old at heart... that being said it's okay because on my best days I behave like a 6 year old. (always got to be better huh? :)

So colourful!

Once we got bored of wax crayon colours we headed through the rest of the center. We discovered a political rally, which we avoided, and later ended on the roof top. Which I am thoughtfully convinced we were not supposed be on, but it afforded us to take a picture of the city and the setting sun.

Sometimes getting lost is a good thing, I have found it is amazing what you can find when you just roam around a city...

Pretty gorgeous view

After finding our way back into the center (past the political rally) we headed towards the fountains. Kansas city is known as the city of fountains, so seeing some of these is a must.

I think we would have seen some significantly more impressive fountains if it were closer to summer time, given it is still a little too early to be running all the fountains a lot of them didn't have water in them... hopefully we can pass through again during summer time :)

By Day...

And by night...

We also saw a building which looked like the Sydney Opera house, but was a building for the performing arts. It was definitely worth the extra drive around the block we did just so I could take a picture of it.

Performing Art building

And that night we went out YAH :)

Downtown earlier that day

The World War II memorial

CBE…

An experience ALL basketball fans should drag their girlfriends to…the College Basketball experience. No jokes, it was fun! It’s an interactive museum where you can see the college teams, learn about coaching strategies as well as basketball plays.

Basketball fan or not this is a great 'museum' to visit, there is so much to do and see. Luckily I am a basketball fan and am training my fabulous significant other to learn to like the game. I think she is catching on well ;)

Vertical Leap

Little feet

There was also a place where you could practice our free throws, three points and practicing your passing. I sucked! I mean at all of them, but I enjoyed trying.

I have actually played basketball with her before with my friends, and I will say that for someone who hasn't ever played before she is actually quite good... she isn't as good as her boyfriend though :P

Free throws

Passing techniques

You could also measure you vertical leap, wing span and what height of rebound you could get. (I’m sure Tyler could explain this waaaay better than me though.)

So to try and quickly explain all of these things... Vertical leap is just a measure of how high you can jump, the had a place where you would stand flat footed, and reach as high as you could and press a button, after you did this they would have you jump as high as you can (starting flat footed, no running start) and the difference in height between the two is your vertical leap... if I recall we both had a 16 inch vertical... kind of sad considering college basketball players have up to 48 inch verticals :(

Wing Span is the measurement of how far you can stretch your arms out, this is an important measurement for basketball players as it helps playing defense and blocking shots.

As for your height its pretty self explanatory...  

In the hoop

Downtown and flashy buildings…

After dinner we drove downtown to see a little of the night life. The main area is the ‘Power and Lights District.’ Which is just as the name suggests, lots of lights! It was so pretty though, all bright and beautiful! Although I did think how sad it is that we have black outs and load shedding in South Africa but have millions of lights here – just cos they look pretty.

The power and lights district is one of the more famous entertainment centers in all of America, a lot of cities have even begun initiatives to copy this sort of format in their own cities (one of which we recently visited in Louisville, stay tuned for that story). That being said the district was started by a power and lighting company and took a area of the city that was run down and turned it into a very nice place for people to congregate.

Power and Lights...

The building that stood out the most to me was the Marriot which has millions of little lights on the outside which changed colours and made various designs, it was so cool. We must have stood outside just staring at the building for what felt like hours (although it definitely wasn’t cos its winter and I would have frozen, even in Kansas City’s slightly warmer weather).

This is the first time in my year+ knowing my girlfriend that I have seen her stand outside in the cold and not even be concerned with getting back inside, it was like watching a kid in a candy store as all the lights flashed and changed on this building and she sat and snapped photographs and videos. Of course seconds after finishing this activity though she was quickly ready to retreat to the warm car. 

Yummy BBQ…

We drove to the hotel got ready for dinner. We had found one on Urban Spoon (an iphone app) called “Oklahoma Joe’s”. Once we had programmed the google machine (my nickname for Tyler’s iphone), and started to drive to where we were directed, however once we came to a cross roads with a gas/petrol station and not much else around I was a little concerned. We pulled into the gas/petrol station to re-group and to ask for real directions. Only to discover that the gas/petrol WAS Oklahoma Joe’s! Dual function. We were told this was the best BBQ ever…

You can imagine how it would feel to drive your girl friend 10 hours and promise her that you will have a nice meal that night and then you pull up to a gas station diner... I wish I could say that I knew what I was doing but unfortunately I cannot, this was completely by luck and was easily the best decision we made on this trip... we even bought some of the spice that they put on their fries to bring home and use for cooking...

Looks legit ... right?

Inside Oklahoma Joe's

It certainty had the longest queue ever. But since we were assured by a few people waiting in the queue we decided to wait it out…and I’m glad we did cos the ribs were so damn good!

Ready to eat!!!

BBQ yumi-ness!

Into Kansas…

We drove straight through Kansas City, MO and ended up just the other side of the boarder in Kansas City, KS. Yes, very confusing but we decided to take a little drive around before heading to the money museum.

KANSAS!!!

We got to see people packing more money than I will ever make in my lifetime! We also saw a display on the wall which had stacks of an obscene amount of money.

Too much money...

My favourite was the money where you could put your head through and take a picture as well as the ‘design your own money.’ There were displays of all the coins and notes created for America, which was pretty great to see how it has changed.

The money museum was pretty cool, that and the weather in KC was pretty fantastic on this given day. While I may not be your typical American (despite what my girlfriend states), I do have a slight love for the green stuff, so seeing my girl friend next to a stack of money worth 40 million dollars was like putting my two favorite things in the world in front of me ;) ... that being said I did get to walk out with a bag full of money, unfortunately it was shred into a million different pieces. 

T$ and me

Bling-ing...

A trip to Des Moines, IA…

Another city, another state…and Tyler and I are ready to travel (and Blog! yes I am back...) again! We drove to Des Moines, Iowa for the night. I don’t remember too much about the drive down except…

Des Moines, IA

…One small part of the road trip…we took a wrong turn – thanks GPS :/ so once we tried to turn around and get back on track we headed up driving up a one way - the wrong way! Then we…wait to be honest I don’t know how we ended up in the right side of the right road as my eyes were firmly shut, so Tyler will have to spill on that!

Of course she doesn't remember much about the trip except the part where I make a mistake... very convenient... that being said we have now done quite a few road trips and I would guess well over 100 hours of driving together so if this is the first road trip error I have made then I will take it... that and nobody was harmed or even witnessed this event, so did it really happen?

Pretty Des Moines sculpture

Early-ish  on Friday morning we went for breakfast before heading out to Kansas City, MO…

The Surf Shack (no, we didn't eat here...we ate across from this place)

Actually celebrating my birthday…

I arranged a lovely dinner with a bunch of my friends at a lovely restaurant in downtown Milwaukee. The theme was gold (since it was my golden birthday.) But I made it a little fun too by making fuzzy ball creatures for everyone that attended, as well as a special table activity to entertain my guests.

One of my talented friends picture

We later headed to a comedy show where I was pulled up on stage. I can’t fully remember what I was supposed to be doing but I spent most of my stage debut laughing…and ululating. (Yes, my poor boyfriend had to sit through it.)

Just laughing!

My friends spoilt me, but my boyfriend spoilt me rotten! I got 25 coupons, for 25 years. Starting with a new pair of ‘kicks’ (running shoes), then a ‘girlfriend ring’, a massage and a bunch of other smart and well thought of gifts. Thanks baby!

My pretty ring :)

Freezing cold…and dead battery…

About to be late for work Amanda dashed out the door, only to run back in with a worried look on her face. Oh no! The car battery had died, and both of us had never started a car with jump leads before. So, she called Dave and he tried to explain to us both how this process works. From opening the bonnet of both cars (which took us awhile to figure out) then how to put the jump leads on the batteries (I had to show Amanda which one was the battery.) Finally he said start the car and I’ll see you at work. Amanda said, no don’t get off the phone, we need a witness to call 9-1-1 in case something happens… at this point I started to rethink whether I wanted to be a part of this. But fortunately it worked out well for us, and she was on her way soon enough…