Point of Entry – Metro North Kansas City
We made a wrong turn. The “Welcome to Kansas” sign was affirmation that we should have gone the other way.
It wasn’t that bad; the place we were headed was on the Missouri/Kansas state line.
Other trips to Kansas started out almost accidentally, too. A professor in college happened upon a great BBQ place just across the river from our college and, though not a big BBQ fan until this place converted me, we went there nearly every Wednesday during my college years and still ship their sauce back east each time we run low.
I picked up a card off the “Help Wanted” board at school one day and, though the position was a long shot, I found myself spending a summer living in Missouri and working in Kansas.
I was told that I wouldn’t enjoy driving across Kansas as I headed back and forth between Missouri and Texas. Yet, though I wasn’t supposed to, I enjoyed each crossing of the Flint Hills as I pondered the courage and strength (mental and physical) of those who crossed them in Conestoga wagons.
My sister-in-law got married in central Kansas. My family flew to Missouri on Friday night, arriving after dark and going straight to bed. Up and on the road before sunrise on Saturday, our first daylight came just after Lawrence. It was such a dramatically different scene from inner-city Baltimore where we had last seen daylight that we felt like we had accidentally stepped through some kind of time/space warp and were now in a different universe all together.
Though I’ve spent many days in Kansas, I’ve never spent the night there. Even so, I’m glad some wrong turns lead me to wake up to Kansas.
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