Kansas City

In September we took a trip to Kansas City to show the family the Steamboat Arabia exhibit Landon and I saw in February. While we were there, we went to Powell Gardens. It was beautiful.

 

There was also hundreds of butterflies flying around, including kinds I had never seen before. I had to look them up when we got back.

Great Spangled Fritillary:

 

South Dakota is just barely in the range of the Buckeye Butterfly, but I have never seen one.

Zebra Swallowtail-these don’t live in South Dakota!

Question Mark Butterfly:

 

Everything’s bigger in Kansas! We saw a large number of the biggest grasshoppers, caterpillars, and spiders we’d ever seen.

This ended up being the joke of the day.

I have been commenting for years that every time we go on a trip, we end up having to stop at a Lego store. In Florida, Chicago, and Minneapolis the boys made sure seeing the Legos was a high priority. It seemed the boys thought we took trips just for Lego stores!

I protested. “No more Lego stores on trips!” I said. “Everything in the store is on the internet, so why do we have to spend time in the store when we always walk out with three kids crying about what they couldn’t get?”

But the Legos apparently have a sense of humor, so they followed us when we visited the destination I had picked out.

 

When we were planning to go to Kansas city, I didn’t realize that the trip would include an airplane flight. Mr. Wilson (tales of our adventures with him here, here, and here) lives in Kansas City now, and he met us at the airport. He is a pilot and was one of Dad’s flight instructors a long time ago.  He had a small Cessna there at the airport, and Dad took everyone from Daniel to Mom on a ride over  beautiful downtown Kansas city. The plane only seats four, so it took four separate flights to give everyone a turn. Mr. Wilson accompanied Dad for the first couple flights in a while Dad became accustomed to the new digital dashboard in the airplane.

 

Downtown Kansas City is really beautiful, and seeing it from the air gave a really cool perspective:

 

 

 

I was especially fond of the patterns the train cars and train tracks made.

 

 

My favorite picture of the day:

Familiar objects were scattered around the hangar where we put the plane away- the wings of the Gentle Lady I crashed once, the little Cessna, and the Keebler, which was put away in its unbelievably small case. Looking to surprise me, Mr. Graham said, “There’s a hot air balloon behind you!”  With a grin I replied, “I’ve ridden in it!”

A few more KC pictures: