WEDNESDAY, 2 MAY 2012

A VERY LONG DAY OF DRIVING

We got up at 0530 this morning, had some bagels, donuts, and juice from the free breakfast, and started driving east then south. Liberty, MO, a northeast suburb of Kansas City, was our first stop. The church has a visitor's center erected on the site of the Liberty Jail where Joseph and Hyrum Smith and three other men were imprisoned for five months awaiting trial for false accusations. Jim didn't take his camera in so no photos. There is a life size replica of the jail inside the visitor's center minus the back wall enabling visitors to see the horrendous conditions experienced by anyone imprisoned there.

There is a brand new temple in Kansas City MO. The open house ended last Saturday so we didn't go inside.

We had lunch at Arthur Bryant's BBQ in Kansas City. It's very popular, but we've had better.

Jim has been to Kansas City before and remembered a museum that has four giant shuttlecocks which he wanted to get some photos of. They were pretty neat. 

I just have to say there is one amazing phenomenon that seems to occur often when Jim is taking pictures...if it is cloudy you can bet the sun will come out at some time while he is photographing. It may only be for a minute or two, but it is usually long enough for him to get some good pictures.

Once Jim was done taking pictures we started out for St. Louis, MO which is on the opposite side of the state. We stopped for gas at the Midway Travel Plaza. We knew about it from a short series the Travel Channel had on it. It wasn't as big as it had seemed on TV.

Two things on our "to do" list in St. Louis--see the LDS temple and the Gateway Arch. We decided to see the temple as soon as we arrived, knowing it would be cutting it close as far as daylight was concerned. 

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza in Bridgeton near the airport--I got the room for $55 on Priceline.com. Sweet!