Day 17 - to Wentzville, Missouri

Great concert last night at Wichita, Kansas.  

Tom Petty sang to a crowd of about 10,000 in an arena, much like Vector, in Auckland. 
The Heartbreakers delivered many of their most popular radio hits as well as quite a few obscure album tracks.

Tom Petty is 61 now but he still looks as he did 20 years ago and his voice was as good as ever.
For the Tom Petty fans out there, here are some of the songs he did with the Heartbreakers:

• Listen to Her Heart
• I Won’t Back Down
• Here Comes My Girl
• Handle With Care (Travelling Wilburys)
• It’s Good to Be King
• Free Fallin’
• Learning to Fly
• Mary Jane’s Last Dance
• American Girl

I was sitting right at the back, high up - and no, I didn't smuggle my camera in.  My photos from my mobile phone were pretty average so I borrowed this picture from the Wichita Eagle (local rag) review...

Tony - note Tom's still playing his famous Rickenbacker!

Typically, we've been staying at either Motel 6, Super 8 or La Quinta accommodation.  Last night was no exception - we stayed at a Super 8 in Wichita.  Straight three-star but they have everything we need, including free WI-FI and breakie in the morning.

I brought two books to read on this trip but haven't read a word from them yet.  Our days are kept full with our travels, exploring, talking to locals and putting these rambling thoughts to you guys.

Today we ticked off our sixth state and over 4000 miles.  The travelling has been fun but the roads through Kansas and Missouri have been a little samey so we've invented a new game... "State Number Plate Spotting".  We're up to 20 already, having started mid-afternoon.

So - the day started off with a thunderstorm.  A quick tune-in to the Weather Channel informed us that we should expect more thunderstorms and a 50% chance of a tornado as we drove through Kansas into Missouri.  The sky was awesome, as it has been throughout Kansas.  Very turbulent and threatening in parts.  We saw a couple of good cloud to ground lightning strikes from high-base cumulonimbus clouds embedded in a high stratoform base (sorry non-weather folk) and some nice big rain drops.  But nothing more than that.

Here's our friend, Interstate 70 - pretty typical of the road as we approached the eastern border of Kansas.

It was pretty windy today and beetling along at 75-80mph, the wind caused higher-sided vehicles to drift around in their lanes quite a bit.  Lots of large trucks along this section of the interstate and the strong cross-winds meant we had to keep alert more than normal.

We stopped at a little cattle cross-over bridge towards the eastern side of Kansas to stretch our legs.  The wind was averaging 25-30 knots at this time.  Here's the view...
 

We pulled in to Topeka, the Kansas State Capital to have a quick tour of the...State Capital.  Here it is.

Impressive building eh?  It was built in 1866 and is 16 feet higher than the State Capitol building in Washington DC.   There is lots of brass inside - cleaning it must be a full-time job for several people!

Now, here's an interesting thing.  We got talking to some of the officials in the Kansas State Capital buildings and one of them offered to give us a personal tour of the building.  But the unusual thing is he SANG aspects of his tour to us.

Here is a huge mural, considered one of the finest pieces of public art in Kansas.  It depicts the artist's interpretation of the anti-slavery movement in Kansas before the Civil War.

More Kansas farmland...

We stopped in at the Kansas Speedway - home of some of the best NASCAR racing in the country.  This is where the concept of Lightning McQueen and the Cars movie came from.  Unfortunately they were ripping the racing surface up when we visited, so we didn't get a chance to have a ride in the NASCAR cars as we intended.

So we visited the Casino that overlooks the race track and decided to put our parking money into a gambling investment.  Well, we lost our eight quarters in about five seconds.  So much for that idea.

We decided it was time for lunch and the casino offered an "all you can eat" buffet.  We could hardly walk after our meal, and strangely, our clothes were fitting tighter around our stomachs after our feast.  We think it had something to do with the air conditioning...

Here's I70, as we approached Kansas City.  This city straddles the Kansas/Missouri border.

And this is what Kansas City CBD looks like from the interstate.

We didn't actually drive into Kansas City itself; instead, the interstate took us on a circumnavigation of the CBD.

We've seen lots of interesting cars on our journey.  Nige took this shot of a wagon through the window as we were powering down the I-70.

We've seen a lot of these Fireworks buildings, from our earliest days of this trip.  They are scattered along the interstates and they've all been closed - apart from this one.  We had to have a look inside.  Good grief - there was enough pyrotechnics inside to hold a half-decent public fireworks display!   OK, we bought a couple of items for testing purposes...although state law maintains we can't let them off in Missouri so we'll have to wait for a border crossing before we light up the sky.

That's it for tonight.  We're off to visit Daniel Boone's house tomorrow (just for you, Mr Parker), then onwards to St Louis and the Mississippi.

See you then.

PF