Vacation Recap Day 4 (Tuesday)
Day 4 was our last day in Kansas City. Our plan was to pack the car back up and hit the road, hopefully getting everything crammed back into the car before noon. We had one final stop planned on our way out of town: The Children’s Museum of Kansas City.
I knew nothing about this museum. While planning the trip, I googled “Kansas City children’s museum” and found this place without knowing it existed. We figured that nothing called a “children’s museum” could be bad for children, so we decided to make it our last impression of Kansas City. For all we knew, it could have been a wondrous hands-on journey to knowledge for children ages 1-100, or a museum about children, possibly filled with creepy wax sculptures of famous children throughout history.
We checked out of the hotel shortly after 9am, and followed the directions I printed from MapQuest from home. We followed the directions across interstates, through major thoroughfares, and onto busy streets, eventually arriving at the given address where we found … nothing. Well, not exactly nothing; we found a strip mall. And blight.
We scratched our heads for a minute, and concluded that something went wrong. Either MapQuest gave us poor directions, or I typed in the wrong address because the buildings we were staring at clearly had nothing to do with museums or children.* Not wanting our vacation to end on a downer, we brainstormed ideas for something else we could do before going home. My best idea was finding a good mall to wander around for a couple hours, giving us the thrill of shopping in a Gymboree located in a completely different state. Ellie had a more radical idea: Since we spent the previous day bemoaning how everything in the Kansas City Zoo was inferior to the Omaha Zoo, why not drive to Omaha and see the real thing before driving back home? I estimated we were about two hours away from Omaha at the time, which would put us at the McDonald’s right outside the zoo at lunchtime.** I put the hammer down on the Subaru, determined to make it to Omaha in record time.
We arrived at the zoo shortly after 1pm. The boys napped off and on along the way, and Abbie’s scheduled nap was only two hours away, so we didn’t know how the kids would tolerate the zoo experience. As long as we made it through the aquarium, though, we’d be happy.
I’d never been to the Omaha Zoo on a weekday afternoon in late summer. Usually we go on a mid-summer weekend day, or maybe on a summer holiday when we’re feeling masochistic. The zoo was amazingly uncrowded with only a few school field trip groups plus fellow preschoolers and their guardians wandering the grounds. This allowed us to see the exhibits at our pace, letting Abbie bounce around at her leisure. It also let us see something we’d never seen.
That’s the octopus. We’ve never seen it out in the open. I assume that the throngs of visitors drive it into a hiding space between the rocks so that you have to squint and use your imagination to see a tentacle poking out. It was cool. Trust me.
We also had the opportunity to snap important pictures, useful for bringing out when meeting future dates:
Those pictures are Ian, Abbie doing her “Abbie Kong” routine, Tory, and Abbie.
The kids tolerated the zoo well. We saw the aquarium, the primates, the bears, the big cats, and experienced the joy of being the only child in the petting zoo. On the way out, I wanted to see the desert dome because it was filled with creatures we hadn’t seen in the past two days, plus it’s a pretty cool geodesic dome. This last detour turned out to be a mistake as the boys were tired and whined through the entire dome. Plus the exhibits were wide open with lots of open water and thorny plants for Abbie to stumble into. We wound up briskly walking through the dome, barely acknowledging the animals as we zoomed past.
We continued our brisk pace out the gate and to our car. We left shortly after 4pm, and drove two hours straight back home. I was worried that we might need to stop for screaming children, but the kids slept long enough to return home with minimal fuss. And now I’ve caught up on all the chores that piled up while we were out of town.
* After checking their website after returning home, I discovered we were in the right place. I failed to notice the site says it’s in “suite 92” and “in the lower level of Indian Springs Business Center.” My closed mind envisions museums being in grand, stately buildings, not the lower level of a dilapidated and poorly marked strip mall.
** We were actually three hours away. Oops.
I knew nothing about this museum. While planning the trip, I googled “Kansas City children’s museum” and found this place without knowing it existed. We figured that nothing called a “children’s museum” could be bad for children, so we decided to make it our last impression of Kansas City. For all we knew, it could have been a wondrous hands-on journey to knowledge for children ages 1-100, or a museum about children, possibly filled with creepy wax sculptures of famous children throughout history.
We checked out of the hotel shortly after 9am, and followed the directions I printed from MapQuest from home. We followed the directions across interstates, through major thoroughfares, and onto busy streets, eventually arriving at the given address where we found … nothing. Well, not exactly nothing; we found a strip mall. And blight.
We scratched our heads for a minute, and concluded that something went wrong. Either MapQuest gave us poor directions, or I typed in the wrong address because the buildings we were staring at clearly had nothing to do with museums or children.* Not wanting our vacation to end on a downer, we brainstormed ideas for something else we could do before going home. My best idea was finding a good mall to wander around for a couple hours, giving us the thrill of shopping in a Gymboree located in a completely different state. Ellie had a more radical idea: Since we spent the previous day bemoaning how everything in the Kansas City Zoo was inferior to the Omaha Zoo, why not drive to Omaha and see the real thing before driving back home? I estimated we were about two hours away from Omaha at the time, which would put us at the McDonald’s right outside the zoo at lunchtime.** I put the hammer down on the Subaru, determined to make it to Omaha in record time.
We arrived at the zoo shortly after 1pm. The boys napped off and on along the way, and Abbie’s scheduled nap was only two hours away, so we didn’t know how the kids would tolerate the zoo experience. As long as we made it through the aquarium, though, we’d be happy.
I’d never been to the Omaha Zoo on a weekday afternoon in late summer. Usually we go on a mid-summer weekend day, or maybe on a summer holiday when we’re feeling masochistic. The zoo was amazingly uncrowded with only a few school field trip groups plus fellow preschoolers and their guardians wandering the grounds. This allowed us to see the exhibits at our pace, letting Abbie bounce around at her leisure. It also let us see something we’d never seen.
That’s the octopus. We’ve never seen it out in the open. I assume that the throngs of visitors drive it into a hiding space between the rocks so that you have to squint and use your imagination to see a tentacle poking out. It was cool. Trust me.
We also had the opportunity to snap important pictures, useful for bringing out when meeting future dates:
Those pictures are Ian, Abbie doing her “Abbie Kong” routine, Tory, and Abbie.
The kids tolerated the zoo well. We saw the aquarium, the primates, the bears, the big cats, and experienced the joy of being the only child in the petting zoo. On the way out, I wanted to see the desert dome because it was filled with creatures we hadn’t seen in the past two days, plus it’s a pretty cool geodesic dome. This last detour turned out to be a mistake as the boys were tired and whined through the entire dome. Plus the exhibits were wide open with lots of open water and thorny plants for Abbie to stumble into. We wound up briskly walking through the dome, barely acknowledging the animals as we zoomed past.
We continued our brisk pace out the gate and to our car. We left shortly after 4pm, and drove two hours straight back home. I was worried that we might need to stop for screaming children, but the kids slept long enough to return home with minimal fuss. And now I’ve caught up on all the chores that piled up while we were out of town.
* After checking their website after returning home, I discovered we were in the right place. I failed to notice the site says it’s in “suite 92” and “in the lower level of Indian Springs Business Center.” My closed mind envisions museums being in grand, stately buildings, not the lower level of a dilapidated and poorly marked strip mall.
** We were actually three hours away. Oops.
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