The SOL Tour - July 24

After departing the small metropolis of St. Joseph's, MO, we dropped down to Kansas City for what I anticipated would be some visually appealing sights to record...and I wasn't disappointed.


Our first stop was the 18th and Vine District, part of a historically African-American downtown area that had been revitalized in recent years.

American Jazz Museum/Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Kansas City is known as the City of Fountains. No where is this more evident than the downtown area known as County Club Plaza.

When you care enough to create the very best....

By now, we were starting to get hungry for lunch. We had a particular hankering to try some Kansas City-style barbecue. However, the flipside of walkable County Club Plaza is that parking spaces were not very convenient. So we popped "barbecque" in the GPS and found a place just across the state line in Kansas.

The interesting thing about driving into Kansas, for someone who is used to border-hugging cities being separated from another state by bodies of water, was that there was no such natural boundary here. We just drove across from Kansas City, MO over into Kansas as if it were just another street.

We found Jack Stack's Barbecue over in Overland Park, KS. As we arrived towards the end of rush hour, it wasn't too hard to find a closer parking space nor be seated at a table. I have to admit that I don't recall exactly what I had, although taking a look now at the menu, I most likely chose the BBQ Combo Lunch with Burnt Ends and Bone-In Chicken. What I do remember for sure about the meal was that the BBQ was a bit more peppery than what I had ever tasted before. Not that it was a bad thing; I certainly enjoyed my meal as did Cathy.

Following our filling lunch, we got back on I-70 and traversed Missouri until we reached St. Louis. The only attraction I really wanted to see here was the famous Gateway Arch. I took no shortage of pictures of this famous landmark. Here are the best few:

After admiring the steel arches for a while, we crossed over into Illinois, where we settled in for the evening.

States visited:18.