Day 40 - St. Louis / Kansas City

We planned on visiting West Plains to see my friend Stephanie and her hometown.  Because she currently works and lives in St. Louis, we needed to meet up on a weekend when she had a few days off.    We finished up in Tennessee earlier than anticipated due to a lot of things being shut down by the flooding weeks previous.  We knew we needed to stall a couple of days before we headed to West Plains. We thought Kansas City would be a good place to spend some time since there are church history sites close by as well.

On our way out to Kansas City we stopped in St. Louis.  Unfortunately it was cloudy and raining in St. Louis, so we didn’t go to the top of the arch or go to the Cardinals day game.  St. Louis fans really love their cardinals, with bad weather and all there was a sea of red flocking to the stadium.  Ryan’s friend from high school Skip plays for Cardinals and was hoping to watch him, but we figured with the rain we should just continue on.

Outside of Kansas City there are a few church history sites that we had not seen.  We went to the visitors Center in Independence.  The sister giving our tour was great and incredibly knowledgeable.  We did not go inside the Community of Christ temple, but we did snap a few photos.  This temple is not like the LDS temples in terms of their purposes, but it is still very special to their church members.

Liberty Jail was close by, so we able to squeeze that in as well.  Liberty Jail is the location where Joseph Smith and other members of the church were held for nearly 5 months.  They thought they were going to sign a peace treaty when they were incarcerated in Liberty Jail.  With Joseph Smith were other Church leaders: Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight, Alexander McRae, and Caleb Baldwin. During the winter months in which they were held in the basement jail, they suffered from intense cold and exposure to the elements because of the small slits in the walls that served as windows. The men slept on dirty straw and suffered poisoning attempts and insults. However, Joseph's biggest grievance was not his own condition of imprisonment but the knowledge that the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were suffering untold anguish that he could not prevent.

In April 1839, Joseph and his fellow prisoners were transported to Gallatin, Missouri, for a grand jury hearing. When that hearing was complete, the prisoners were told they would be moved to the jail in Boone County. While on the journey from Gallatin, the men guarding the Prophet and his friends allowed Joseph and the others to escape. The Church leaders, in a very weakened condition, soon caught up with the main body of the Church.  It was humbling to see the awful conditions they endured for such a short time.  With the ceilings being only 6 ft. tall many of the prisoners could not even stand straight up.  

(You can see the two stories from this view.  The top was for the jail keeper and the bottom for the prisoners.)

(The jail was built using three layers.  The lose stone in the middle was to ensure no one snuck out of the jail.  If they tried to escape the lose stone would move, making a loud noise and it would alert the jail keeper.)

(The replica of the man standing is shorter than 6 ft. This gives you an idea of the conditions and how many of the men were not able to stand up straight given the height.)

The BBQ battle continued as we hit up Arthur Bryant Kansas City BBQ.  Kansas City is known as the sauce capital.  I got a beef sandwich that was loaded with literally a pound of meat.  Ryan got a meat platter of pork, beef, and turkey.  Everything we tried was great and the sauces were great.  There was an original sauce that had more of an A1 type of flavor.  There was also a sweet and hot sauce along with a spicy sauce.  To date, it was the most well rounded BBQ.  Currently Kansas City is in first place.  We’ll see what Texas has to offer.  I’m sure it will pull through!

Downtown Kansas City was really nice.  Ryan and I drove through the area, shocked at how much we enjoyed the area.  There are so many new and updated restaurant and shopping areas.  Our liking for Kansas City continued to increase as we went over to Country Club Plaza.  This is a high end out door shopping area that is surrounded with beautiful fountains, sculptures, and Spanish tile.  The streets were lined with street light lanterns and hanging flower baskets.  Also by the Plaza is a riverwalk area.  On the other side of the river/stream, there are some extremely nice homes that we were able to drive by.

I was blown away by Kansas City.  We were both pleasantly surprised with the City and couldn’t find a thing wrong with the place, other than it is probably freezing in the winter.