Missouri Road Trip: The Road to Kansas City
Missouri Road Trip: Day 1
Friday morning I woke up at 5am and was out the door around 5:45 on my way to Urbana to pick up my friend Brian. We were heading off on a Missouri road trip from Chicago to Kansas City. I picked up Brian around 7 and we hit the road to more dangerous trying to film stuff while I drive driving!
Our first and only roadside attraction stop in Illinois was the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle in Collinsville. I’d seen it before, but as ketchup is probably one of my favorite inventions ever, it is probably one of my favorite roadside attractions ever. Brian had never seen it and remarked that it would be more impressive if it was actually filled with ketchup. And I agree. But I love it none the less. And then it was off to St. Louis!
I had lots of awesome stops planned for St. Louis, Missouri, but we didn’t have time to see any of them, so we pretty much skipped the town other than for lunch at Sweetie Pie’s, a soul food kitchen thatI am pretty sure was on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. The smothered pork was amazingly delicious and the place was so sweet and, even though it was a cafeteria, there was a guy who came by and took my tray for me to my table.
We decided to move on from St. Louis after lunch. Navigating city traffic always puts you a little behind and we had so much else to see. We went to Clayton next to see a giant shoe made from shoes and then Columbia to see a statue of Beetle Bailey.
We were on a renegade mission, putting dimes into parking meters and running to take photos and bask in the awesomeness of everything just to get back to the car as the meter was about to expire. A girl was studying at the Beetle Bailey statue and I didn’t want to ask her to move so I tried photographing around her.
Next up we headed to Sedalia, where we saw a neat little museum devoted to the area’s railroad industry, complete with some cool artwork on the railroad itself! While in Sedalia we made a stop for lunch #2 of the day, The Wheel Inn, and partook in their claim-to-fame specialty: The Guberburger. The Guberburger is a hamburger topped with lettuce, tomato, and…wait for it…peanut butter! It was quite tasty and all in all I was much more surprised that I ate a burger with lettuce on it than that I ate a burger with peanut butter on it!
After filling our stomachs yet again we hit some back roads to see two world’s largest things: the world’s largest pecan in Brunswick and the world’s largest goose in Sumner! The pecan was cool and the goose was amazing! It was one huge bird!
Our final stop of the day was Chillicothe. Have you ever said that something was the greatest invention since sliced bread? Well, you have Chillicothe, Missouri to thank for that as it is the home of sliced bread!
From there we hit the road to Overland Park, Kansas where we had a hotel for the night. We were going to just order a pizza from the room, as we were pretty tired and wanted to get to blogging! But, low and behold, what was right outside our hotel? A Winstead’s! Winstead’s is a hamburger joint that was named one of the best burgers by George Motz in his book Hamburger America. Luckily it was still open for another hour! I got a double with cheese, a chocolate milk shake, and a half and half, where they give you BOTH fries and onion rings! Everyone should have that!
Then we checked into our Settle Inn hotel to retire for the night and get ready for the big day ahead…
Read more from my Missouri road trip:
Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest Qualifier in Kansas City, Missouri
Anonymous
June 10, 2009at11:48 pmI’m from chillicothe il.’
it’s way cooler.