God Bless Generica

We headed out of StL in the early afternoon on Saturday (7/25). I-70 had slowed to a crawl because of an accident and we took advantage of the slowdown to consume an in-car lunch of PB & honey or cheese sandwiches. Our next major stop was at a Holiday Inn Express on the west side of Kansas City from where we would launch one of the longer legs of the journey across the entire state, roughly 10 hours. Everything was indeed up-to-date in Kansas City, at least where our Holiday Inn was located but I doubt that they had gone “about as fer as they could go” when it came to sprawl unfortunately. Our hotel was on the edge of what appeared to be a vast “Generica” development complete with the usual array of big box stores and frozen custard establishments. We decided to venture in to the heart of the consumer frenzy because folks were itching for non-car prepared cuisine. This turned out to be an immediate mistake as the parking and traffic situation in the central part of the commerce zone was a nightmare. (The last thing I wanted to be doing at that point was navigating a 7 person SUV and aggressively competing for scant parking spots). So, we got out of that part of the complex with all due haste and parked our big Conestoga wagon in a distant pasture and hiked it in from there – of course the trails were nonexistent and we had to cross a number of wide concrete streams and manicured hedges finally making to a trendy-looking Asian eatery. Via a recommendation from cousin Alex, the kids all started out with some California rolls that turned out to be quite a hit (a second order was required). Sufficiently fed, we headed back to the hotel for a splash in the indoor “pool” – I say “pool” because it seemed more like a large communal bathtub than an actual swimming facility.