Missouri has it's ups and downs.

Sunday, June 30th.

So apparently I found where Santa Claus lives for the rest of the year, and oddly enough it's in Illinois.  

After about 3 and a half hours of open field goodness, we were in St. Louis!  Seen above is the gateway arch on the riverside park.

St. Louis Bread company.  Same company as Panera, different brand.  Little known fact, Au Bon Pain owns them both.  Things that make you go hmmmm...

St. Louis Capital Building with gateway arch in the background.

Apparently today was the St. Louis gay pride festival.  Strangely enough we were able to find free street parking just a few blocks from it.  We didn't attend, it started to rain (again).  But we took a little bit of a driving tour.

Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.  This was an astonishingly beautiful structure. 

Giant solid wood doors.

The ceilings were amazingly high, and every inch was covered with a design, no two alike.

I took so many pictures inside here.  It was peaceful and beautiful.  Every step I took brought me to another work of art on the walls, the ceilings.  

I thought this picture came out better, but the gold work on this podium was interesting.

Saw a couple of these large lamp posts.

Passing by the university of St. Louis had some amazing residences.  Houses that looked like city library buildings.  But we were on our way out.  Had a nice little visit in St. Louis, but we were on schedule to get to Kansas City next.  Seen above is possibly the largest Amoco sign, or any gas station for that matter, that I think I'll ever see.

I just want to say, Kansas City is a huge disappointment.  We hoped to stay somewhere in town, and just get a bite to eat and maybe a beer, however we refused to exit our vehicles.  We exited the highway a couple exits premature to take what we had expected to be a more scenic route into downtown.  What we were greeted by was just a god awful slummy slum slum.  We were hoping once we reached the downtown district it would improve, which it did, but marginally.  Kansas City is the twin city, with one part in Missouri and one in Kansas.  As we were driving through Missouri, and dismissing the idea of spending time here, we thought "perhaps the Kansas side is better?".  Wrong.  We crossed a local road bridge into Kansas, spent about 3 minutes fearing for our lives and turned right around.  We found a casino in the north outskirts of the city area, and felt like this was our safest bet.  No pun intended.

Turns out people in Missouri are largely assholes.  I thought us Jerseyans had a bad reputation, but the stank attitude we were greeted with in most places was a sure turn off.  Trying not to dwell on the negatives, I'll move on.  We spent the night at Harrrahs, sure we gambled a bit, but made it a relatively early night, for our trek into Kansas tomorrow.

Monday, July 1st. 

Welcome to Kansas!  We're making a quick stop in Topeka, only an hour outside of Kansas City, to see the Brown vs. the Board of Education national site, and then onward to Colorado we shall go!