I got as early a jump on the day I could muster yesterday morning after my night in motel hell, but still had to speed through central and eastern Kansas to make it in time to catch game two of the I-70 Series between the Royals and St. Louis Cardinals (I know, I know... no one should ever speed anywhere just to catch a Royals game - seriously, the team is awful). But I did, and I made it, paid 10 bucks for a standing room only ticket and made a B-line for the beer line.
Kauffman Stadium (or 'The K' as it's known in KC) is cool... a classic example of the modernist stadium design movement of the 1970's (Dodger Stadium in LA is another gem from this era). It's intimate, but spacious - if that's possible - and a great place to catch a matinee, even if the humidity index is hovering around 105!
The Royals lost, as usual, and the highlight of the game was spending innings 5 through 8 trying to explain Canada's marijuana laws to a guy who looked like one of the dudes from FUBAR (he couldn't wrap his head around the difference between 'decriminalized' and 'illegal' - honestly, when he found out I was from Canada, the only thing he wanted to talk about was weed!) A quick dinner, a couple of pints and some writing rounded out what proved to be the lowest key day of the trip so far... needed it though...
This morning I scrambled to make it out of the hotel before checkout time (slept until after 11:00 - oops!) and ventured downtown to see a bit of the city. KC is a nice enough city: large and metropolitan, yet sleepy, polite, and well manicured. I headed down to the city's Crossroads Arts District to see some of the grafitti art I'd heard about from somewhere I can't remember - very cool:
I then somehow wound up at the City Market in the River District due to a wrong turn, which turned out to be a nice surprise. I bought some oranges, got a large mocha and sat and watched the people do thier Sunday shopping:
It was a pleasant - albeit brief - stop smack dab in the middle of the continent, and with the contentment of knowing 'I bin there' I bid adieu to KCMO and headed south, bound for Little Rock, Arkansas.
After stopping for gas about 20 miles north of the Arkansas border I thought the sky looked cool and I snapped a few pictures of it:
Ummm, yeah... I ran into this about a half hour later - and while I escaped what I have to assume was the worst of it - it was a little touch and go there for a while (if you've ever passed a tractor trailer on a freeway doing 60 MPH in a driving rain storm, you know what I'm talking about!)
Needing a beer after that I pulled off the highway into a town called Ozark, nestled in the foothills of the beautiful, green rolling hills of the Boston Mountains in north central Arkansas (the southern portion of the famous Ozark Mountain Plateau). Ozark is exactly what I came to this part of the world to see: a tiny, backwoods town filled with simple, hardworking Americans who love their guns, NASCAR and Dancing With The Stars.
I stopped in at a little pizza joint - the only thing open in town on a Sunday, I guess - ordered a Miller Light when I was asked what 'y'all' was havin'... and paid a grand total $3.68 for the two I managed to choke back before the kids in the booth across the aisle (jumping on the seats and screaming at the top of their lungs while their defeated looking parents gummed their pepperoni pie in silence) finally got to me.
I drove through town four more times, looking for something - anything - that caught my attention, or might provide me with some grand middle-American epiphany... the only thing that did was a sign propped up against a dumpster beside what looked to be a taxidermy shop that read "Roadkill Dump Here".
I'm writing this from a Motel 6 room in a place called Conway, Arkansas which is about 20 minutes west of Little Rock (it's amazing the lift a person can get from seeing a blinking sign off the Interstate offering rooms at $49.99 with free wi-fi and laundry). As I stand outside my room smoking a Camel Light and drinking a PBR tallboy I found at the bottom of my cooler, I stare at a Wallmart parking lot - that's the bad news. The good news? There's what appears to be a 'Waffle House' located on the other side of that parking lot - I have no idea what that is, but I plan on finding out in the morning...
Today's RAD song(s) commemorate day 5 of my 'Grand Middle-American Adventure'... enjoy!
Kansas City by Fats Domino
Chicken Train by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils
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1 comment:
Great adventures so far, it seems... and some that you can claim to have "lived through," which always adds glory to the story-telling.
Though you're not much planning where you're going, aside from the next epic baseball game, you should check if you'll be passing through any places on Taylor Takes a Taste... Mississippi, Tennessee, Colorado... Hell, she even has a section dedicated to bacon! I envy you and the American diners you will frequent..
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