Heartland Flyover Loop

In our quest to fill in our USA state map, we decided to conquer the midwest gap this summer. With only a week free in our summer calendar, we were attempting to spend quality "foot time" in 5 fairly large states. We started in Tulsa with a night flight and car rental. We had a little air b-n-b that was a small, old house, but fit our needs perfectly for a couple of nights.

We walked a quarter mile to a delicious breakfast restaurant and then headed to The Gathering Place, the #1 park in the nation according to someone, and which was directly across the street from our little abode. They had just had a lot of rain, so it felt quite Houston-y, but thankfully it wasn't supposed to rain on our one day in OK. However, some of the park closest to the Arkansas River was flooded.

Luckily, the park is huge, so we still saw lots of swings and playgrounds, wandering paths and trees, and though we may be getting too big, we pretended that we weren't.

Route 66 runs through Tulsa and was celebrating its 100th anniversary, so they had several nods to that. They also had a pond full of koi and kayakers, though I didn't get any takers for the latter in my group, unfortunately! There were lots of other thoughtful scenes with benches and water features throughout the park.

One of the coolest things was a large building with food and coffee on the first floor and public seating on the second floor. It was artsy with an intricate wood ceiling, but had floor to ceiling windows to maximize the beauty outside. There were several tables and comfy chairs, including rocking chairs and couches, and it was clean and in great condition! It was The Gathering Place, and I would probably work from there every once in a while, if I lived nearby.

By mid-day, we were very warm and tired, so we made it back to the house and a local sandwich place before some R&R in the afternoon. On a whim, we decided to check out the minor league baseball team that night, as it was only a 10-minute drive from our house. It was very warm, but the Drillers beat the Corpus Christi Hooks, and we had a great seat with a view of the downtown. They also had a lengthy fireworks show after the game.

On our way out of Oklahoma the next day, we stopped by the Pioneer Woman Mercantile, which is a shop / restaurant for the eponymous cook in tiny Pawhuska, OK. 

We had a delicious brunch (they thought they were getting out of the food photo - haha!), including avocado toast, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, breakfast burrito, and the tastiest roasted potatoes. Yum! and worth the detour.

We perused the adjacent store briefly before getting back on the road, and we found the perfect thank you gift for Aunt "Greasy."

Eastern Oklahoma and Kansas were hillier than we were expecting, but yes, a lot of wide open spaces. This section was a little crowded with cows, oil derricks, and wind turbines all together.

By early afternoon, we made it to our next stop in Hutchinson, Kansas for Strataca! Sounds impressive, right? Well, it's a 100+ year old salt mine. Did I lose you? You best stick around because, "Today you will learn about salt," as the intro video so helpfully informed us.

We were issued hard hats, watched a short safety video, and then were plunged into darkness 650 ft below ground via an industrial elevator. Upon exiting the elevator, we found the mine! They've been excavating salt from here in an efficient waffle-like grid for over a century. It's mostly used as road salt and some in animal feed, but not fine enough for table salt.

There was a long path with info and displays, but we enjoyed the train ride and mine tour. It was a pleasant 68 degrees (nice change from the 95+ above ground), and there was a pervasive thought of how dark it would be if all of the power went out. In between salt harvests, you can host a corporate event, sleep overnight (boy scouts), or run a 5k in the mine. They also store important documents here from all over the world (think natural disaster-proof, climatized, no mold or pests, etc.). I hope you too learned something about salt.

Now enjoy some photo ops:

And finally, on to Concordia and Aunt Chrissy, the hostess with the mostest! We enjoyed lovely home cooked meals, peaceful sleep, and her sweet company. (Note to self, do not take Plum Road to get there. Google Maps must have thought we were in an off-road vehicle to handle that muddy slope!)

She lives in an old, cozy farmhouse, and we had the lower level pretty much to ourselves. We could stretch out a bit and did our laundry. After dinner, when it had cooled off a bit we checked out the cows, chased fireflies, and climbed trees.

After another lovely breakfast, we were on the road again. Thanks Aunt Chrissy!

We headed north to Nebraska, our third state in 3 days! We stopped in Lincoln for lunch at Runzas. Funny story, we had made runzas at home one time years ago (never having heard of them before that), but it was more difficult than it looks, so they didn't turn out very well, and the kids didn't really like them at the time. So when we were coming to Nebraska, we just had to try the local specialty by the experts. The place was hopping for a Sunday lunch: lots of sports families stopping in after their game, etc. The runzas (like a hot pocket but with beef, onions, and cabbage inside) were better than what we made at home, but the fries were standard frozen fair.

We do like a good state capitol to stretch our legs in A/C and use the facilities before getting back in the car. (see Maine, Montana, and Wisconsin to name a few) Nebraska has a somewhat unique art deco tower style of capitol, and we strolled through the interior enjoying the art deco-y murals and features, just missing a tour.

We also drove by the University of Nebraska, but were not interested enough to walk around in the heat without a plan. However, we did drive right next to the stadium!

We finally reached Omaha and walked to dinner after checking into our hotel. Just a five minute walk through Old Market's brick streets to some decent Italian food. It was a hot one, but we toughed it out on a German walk post-dinner through a downtown park out to the riverfront.

If you ask anyone what to do in Omaha, inevitably they say "go to the zoo." It wasn't really what we were looking to do, but the Omaha zoo is touted as the best zoo in the country, even better than San Diego! So let's see what they've got... 

We started at the ape house. It's always fascinating to observe our closest animal relatives. I feel you, orangutan. It was early morning and already sweltering.

Next up, the world's largest indoor desert. 84,000 square feet under a geodesic dome, including a nocturnal exhibit below. I didn't get pictures down there, since it was so dark, but it was home to our favorite exhibit: a bat cave! The constant fluttering of bat wings was reminiscent of Batman's lair and a pretty unique animal colony to experience at the zoo!

There was a butterfly habitat you could walk through. You had to check yourself and your party in the mirrors before you could leave to make sure you didn't have any stowaways on your clothes.

The kids love an aquarium. This one had a sexy starfish and touch pool, in addition to the usual suspects: jellyfish, shark tunnel, sea horse, etc. There was also a swamp with alligators, big fish, and a glass-walled beaver dam.

The zoo had a huge jungle exhibit, which was really well done. There was a meandering path, and water exhibits with otters and hippos next to monkey islands, that somehow kept all of the animals that needed to be separated.

There were free-flying bats (below) and birds here too. It was immersive, and you could almost forget that you were in a zoo.

They kept it interesting for the humans, as well, with waterfalls, caves, and rope bridges along the multi-level path.

We brought snacks and drinks in with us and found a nice shady, quiet bench by the okapi for a late lunch. Dad had had enough zoo time, so the kids and I left him there to go check out a few more animals. We still had about half the zoo that we hadn't seen yet!

It was definitely getting warmer, so we zig-zagged from shade to sprayer to shade on the walk to the back half of the zoo. In the Sahara grasslands, we saw giraffes elegantly using their tongues to bring down branches of leaves to their mouths, baby elephants playing in a mud puddle, and a rhino off in the distance. One of the vendors gave us a free giant soft pretzel, so that they could call it a day, and we decided to do that too. (Side note: an aggressive ground squirrel nipped Hadley's finger in an effort to get some pretzel, but thankfully no blood was drawn and no sign of rabies yet.)

We didn't make it to the big cats, the Asian highlands, or Madagascar, but we did walk through the aviary on our way to the exit, which housed a variety of birds living in harmony, free to mingle as they pleased. I guess we'll still have new things to see if we make it back here someday.

Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted and stuck close to the hotel that night. The next morning, we checked out the pedestrian bridge that crosses the Missouri River. We could see the College World Series stadium and stand in 2 states at the same time! Woohoo Iowa! At the foot of the bridge in Omaha, there's a Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Headquarters and Visitor Center, which was disappointing. Not much in the way of exhibits there, but we did watch some of the Ken Burns' documentary film.

Iowa got the short end of the stick on this trip. Most of the cool stuff in Iowa is central or east of where we were, and it isn't a small state. Since we had limited time for this vacation, we had to stick to SW Iowa, and there's not much there besides corn...

During our hour of interstate in Iowa, we detoured to Waubonsie State Park to get in a short hike and give Iowa a fair shake. These are the Loess Hills, a rare collection of rolling hills created from wind-blown dust, found only here and in China. It was surprisingly pleasant and had a pretty good overlook back toward Nebraska. Thanks for all the memories, Iowa! Next! 

We stopped in St. Joseph, MO for lunch at Magoon's, a 100+ year old delicatessen. The food was okay, but the atmosphere was still like an old soda fountain. I wanted to like St Joe's with its Pony Express and Jesse James history, but we took a quick look at the Pony Express Museum and decided to skip it. We walked around a nearby park, and then continued to KC.

Our KC hotel was a short walk to a highly-rated BBQ joint, Jack Stack. When in Rome... It was really good, even the brisket! We got a family style special and still had a ton leftover.

We were also just down the street from Union Station, which was all geared up for the World Cup Fan Festival. Luckily it was between games, so it was nearly empty. Besides soccer, we saw the history of Union Station, celebrating its 100th anniversary a couple of years ago.

The next day was another road day, across Missouri to Saint Louis. Because of construction on the interstate, it was recommended that we go on one of the smaller highways. You know we love a good capitol potty stop, so we went through Jefferson City. The Missouri capitol didn't disappoint, and they had a bunch of exhibits on display about their state history. I'm not sure why more capitols don't have that. One of them was about the USS Missouri, which we had just seen in March at Pearl Harbor.

After some JJ's sandwiches, we went to Central Dairy, a charming 100+ year old local ice cream parlor. They had some tasty flavors and generous scoops for $3! Can't beat that. We got some strong Reed's Dairy vibes, just missing the cows...

Finally, Saint Louis rolled into view. We did a small detour on the way to drive by WashU, Uncky Dan's alma mater. 

Again, it was too hot to wander around campus, but we did get out at the Chess Hall of Fame. My favorite part of that was the old house itself, but there were plenty of photos and videos for the avid chess fan. Did you know there is a sport called Chessboxing? And it's just like it sounds it would be.

Our hotel was a block away from the arch. We could even see a leg from our room! They had an evening reception that was enough food for a decent dinner, including drinks! The next morning, after a delicious buffet breakfast, we went right to the arch. Wow, the sun was intense that day, so we scurried inside to the museum underneath. 

We had a ticket to the top! Setting some claustrophobic concerns aside, we boarded our cozy bubble and watched 630 feet of stairs disappear beneath us.

Views from the top (hello, St Louis!):

VIews from underneath (how they built it movie was pretty interesting, pre-OSHA😅):

Our last stop was the City Museum, which is basically a 4-story playground. Some artistic entrepreneurs saved an old 10-story building from demolition and turned the first 4 floors into an artsy wonderland, a maze of tunnels, slides, and stairs where headlamps and kneedpads are recommended. It's hard to describe, but the kids dipped into a small tunnel 5 minutes after arrival, and we didn't see them for 3 hours, except for a snack break when they appeared sweaty and thankful that O was able to maneuver his way out of a tight spot (a 90-degree turn between a small tunnel and a plastic tube that he had to shimmy through). 

We big'uns stuck to more accessible paths and found some interesting architectural pieces salvaged from other 19th century buildings and a rooftop deck featuring more chutes and ladders and a bus cantilevered over the corner of the building. Time to get off this crazy train (bus)! Next stop: 10 stories below!

At the end of this hot, busy day, we were toast! Time to head back to the hotel for some R&R, so that we could pack up and head home...

to properly celebrate this lady's #14...

and this country's #250!