Trip West 2003 - The Midwest

DAY 2 - September 28, 2003

After a night in Concordia, MO (home of CSR website fan Barbara S., Hi Barbara!) we moseyed on into Kansas City....

... as we are approaching KC, Kenny happens to notice a billboard that he thought said Cablea's on it. I thought thats weird, the only Cabela's I knew of was way on the western side of Nebraska in Sidney. Surely he read the billboard wrong, they wouldn't advertise something that far away from here (unlike Walls Drugs!). Then Kenny sees another billboard, the Cabela's is on the western side of Kansas City! I can't believe it. We've been to the one in Sidney a few times, but since I discovered the Nebraska Sand Hills, I haven't been back by there in many years. Sidney is a little out of the way. But there is a brand new Cabela's in KC!! So we detour a little to go to it!

For those of you not familiar with Cabela's, they are the "World's Foremost Outfitter of Hunting, Fishing, and Outdoor Gear". For me it's like a kid getting to go to Santa's shop a the North Pole.

Here I am in front of the huge Elk sculpture to the side of the store. Their stores are so big, they have to have traffic directors like Disney World. They are amazing...

... Cabela's stores are veritable cathedrals to everything you would ever want when going outdoors. Their stores are also famous for something I usually don't agree with, but...

... their taxidermy mount displays are unbelievable. The store is almost like a nature museum...

... this of course was the African display...

... Complete with a Baboon escaping a Leopard.

Here are some Grizzly bears are fighting in the Rockies display...

... where a whole herd of Elk, and Big Horn Sheep, and Deer, and just about every other animal to be found in the Rockies can be seen. Kind of makes you wonder if there are any animals left in the wild! But the display is impressive, they even have...

.. an Alaskan bush plane... complete with whirling propeller!

Here I'm looking back down from the second floor were there is a rustic furniture section and a 180-seat restaurant! This link will show you the KC store I was in. They have 4 web pages just on this store! You might be able to see Kenny down at the bottom of the stairs. The ponds had live ducks in them.

Kenny and I racked up. I got a pair of insulated Rocky boots and about 100lbs of Cabela's and Carhartt shirts and pants. Kenny got a crossbow! Boy we're getting off to a scary spending start to the trip! But then, I don't get to go to the outfitter wonderland very often.

After Cabela's we head north. I always stop at this last rest stop in Missouri along I-29 N. Here the dogs get to run around and stretch some

Next to the rest area is an old cemetery, apparently from 1840. I wonder what all happened here, and what the significance of this cemetery is?

As we travel along the Missouri river valley, there are hundreds of farms. Classic, big farms with big old farmhouses... and barns bigger than the houses.

Here we are at the end of the day. We're on Hwy 2, the short cut to Lincoln from I-29. I can remember when this was just a two lane road! We're much deeper into the Prairie now. Big, wide and open. And blessedly a lot fewer people.

Being on this road again reminds me of the time I was here in 1997. Me, Kenny, and Timber were in my 4Runner and my parents were in Dad's Tacoma, making our way through 2 feet of snow! Eastern Nebraska had gotten hit with an early blizzard in September. The power was out all over Nebraska and we were some of the last to make it into Lincoln before all the hotels filled up. People were coming into town were they could get warm and eat!

Back to Day 1 or on to Day 3