We arrived in Kansas City...actually Kansas City, Kansas across the Kansas River from Kansas City, Missouri. We had made stops along the way: "The Cathedral of the Plains" a massive church and convent built by Germans from Russia's Volga River. Each family was tasked with bringing 260 stones from a distant quarry to build the edifice. The giant easel in the town of Goodland with a replica of Van Gogh's Sunflowers 24 feet by 32 feet (the easel is 80 feet high). The Huron Cemetery in which the last of the Wyandot Indians (originally from the area of Lake Huron) were buried after being swindled out of lands in Ohio and Michigan. The Wyandots had actually organized themselves into a territorial government and applied for admission into the United States, but Congress had rejected their application because they were Indians.


We spent a few hours at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum with its new addition built partly underground...world class collections. Oldenberg's shuttlecocks on the lawn...perhaps not that different in concept from Goodland's Van Gogh. One of my favorite paintings was Jacobshaven's scene of the Platte River at sunset. So art, history, the highway miles converge as we move east.