A Vacation in Leavenworth, Kansas

New Haven, CT to Leavenworth, KS and return

Amtrak Train 173, NortheastDirect, New Haven Union Station to New York Pennsylvania Station, Unreserved Coach--April 13, 1998

Amtrak Train 49, the Lake Shore Limited, New York Penn Station to Chicago Union Station, Viewliner Standard Bedroom--April 13-14, 1998

Amtrak Train 3, the Southwest Chief, Chicago Union Station to Kansas City, MO, Superliner Standard (Economy) Bedroom--April 14-15, 1998

Amtrak Train 4, the Southwest Chief, Kansas City, MO, to Chicago Union Station, Superliner Standard (Economy) Bedroom--April 19, 1998

Amtrak Train 48, the Lake Shore Limited, Chicago Union Station to New York Penn Station, Viewliner Standard Bedroom--April 19-20, 1998

Amtrak Train 476, NortheastDirect, New York Penn Station to New Haven, Unreserved Coach--April 20, 1998

Trip Segments: [New Haven to New York] [New York to Chicago]
[Chicago to Leavenworth]
[Adventures in Kansas and Missouri]
[Kansas City to Chicago] [Chicago to New York] [New York to New Haven]

Adventures in Kansas and Missouri--April 15-19, 1998

My entire family is Easterners: I'm a Connecticut native, as is Rebekah; Evelyn is from upstate New York, and Brendan was born in Maine. So we were somewhat suspicious of Kansas' attractions. Well, we were wowed. The Kansas City area thoroughly delighted us.

The first day we toured Fort Leavenworth, founded in 1827 as an outpost at the edge of "Indian Territory." Colonel Leavenworth was supposed to build the fort on the east side of the Missouri River. When he arrived, however, he found that his assigned location was not only a boggy swamp in the river's flood plain, but also it lay beneath a ridge that rose sharply from the Missouri's west bank. He promptly resited the fort according to builder's and military logic in preference to political.

Today Fort Leavenworth serves two major purposes. The one it is best known for is called the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the Armed Forces' only high-security military prison. It also hosts the Army's Command and General Staff College, which all US Army officers attend on or just before their promotion to major. Its origins, however, are apparent in its architecture. For years it was headquarters to the cavalry units that patrolled the Santa Fe Trail (some of whose ruts scar the hillside above river), and a large number of buildings are old stables. Among the units its hosted were the "Buffalo Soldiers," Regular Army cavalry and infantry units comprised of African-Americans in the days before integration. A fine monument to those units stands a short distance from the college; it is a large bronze statue of a black man in uniform riding a charging horse. Stones marked with the title of each unit bore the names of those who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

We also toured the Frontier Army museum and looked over the rest of the post. Appropriately enough, one of the features of the fort is a large fenced pasture with a small herd of bison (buffaloes) in it. Tradition says that there must always be bison at Leavenworth.

I should also mention that earlier that day, John and I drove out to the airport to rent a van which could carry us all around for the week. Along the way we stopped at a small shop at a crossroads, where he invited me to check out his favorite vending machine--his tongue was firmly in his cheek. The vending machine dispensed "Live Bait."

The next day we went to a children's museum in Kansas City, KS, which delighted the children quite a bit. Then we toured around Kansas City (in both states) for a while, looking at houses--in one neighborhood the size of the houses increases with each block, until good-sized mansions line each side of the street. We toured through a unique downtown shopping area which has, astonishingly enough, no stop signs. The builder apparently decided that this was the way to put cars and pedestrians on equal footing, and I have to admit it seems to work--as long as everyone understands the rules. Architecturally it resembles a Mexican village, but the shops are familiar to many mall shoppers. We had dinner in the plaza at KC Masterpiece for its famed local barbecue.

That Friday Kansas City had a cattle drive. KC had once been a major meat-packing and -shipping center, with cattle arriving on the hoof and in livestock railroad cars. A few years ago, a local radio personality decided that the city needed a cattle drive again, and he made it an event. A small herd of about a hundred shorthorns came in by truck to be herded through the city by about twenty cowpokes--both male and female. Waiting near the start of the drive, we overheard someone ask one of the cowboys, "How long do you expect this to take?"

The rider replied, "Well, we're starting at noon, and we hope to have them all back in that pen again by sunset. That's why we do this after the change to daylight saving time."

We heard that the year before some of the cattle had been spooked by a bursting balloon, and had gone wandering about the streets to the consternation of spectators, cowpokes, police officers, and office workers. Office workers? Some of the steers had wandered into downtown buildings by the simple method of walking through the radar-operated automatic doors which opened invitingly in front of them, to the great surprise of the occupants. I never heard if one found the offices of Merril Lynch or not.

This year there were no such disturbances; all went smoothly, and they looked pretty impressive clattering past us. There was one hitch at the end of the day, however. The radio fellow who created the event rode in the parade, too, and at its end headed for a local bar. He was supposed to ride his horse into the bar, but I guess it had been a long day and it refused. Which led a Kansas City Star reporter to write, "You can lead a horse to a watering hole but you can't make him take a drink."

Lunch that day was on the grounds of the old stockyards at a restaurant called the Golden Ox. A photo of the stockyards in operation hung on the wall, and it was breathtaking--everything visible in the photo was barns, holding pens, and cattle cars on the railroad sidings. Those unfortunate beasts' luckless descendents were, I must say, pretty tasty.

In the afternoon we drove out to Independence, MO, for a quick look at Harry Truman's home and nearby, a pair of competing neighbors: a good-sized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints next to its rival Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We finished off the day with ice cream.

Saturday morning we took Evelyn and Rebekah to the airport to catch their flight home, then we drove to Lawrence, KS. First we stopped briefly at a park where an old Santa Fe 4-6-4 Prairie had been set up for children to play on. Brendan and Brian proceeded to do so with glee. We then visited the University of Kansas' fine museum, with its some dinosaur bones and the stuffed likeness of "Comanche," the horse which was the only survivor of Custer's force at Little Big Horn. The highlight of the day, however, for Brendan and for his godbrother Brian, was the visit to the Fun Zone. They tore through the tunnels and down the slides, and just had a great time.

That brought an end to our time in the Kansas City area. I saw a lot of railroad activity, as three major lines pass through the area. I also saw things that surprised me a good deal, such as a highway billboard for a funeral home. A funeral home? The days had been long and a lot of fun, and the children enjoyed each other quite a bit. Still, the fun was not over, as we still had a train trip ahead of us!

[Continue with the trip from Kansas City to New Haven]