Leaving Denver, Kansas - Kansas City Missouri

After leaving Colorado Springs we headed towards Denver, where we were going to have lunch. This time last year Mike had gone for some training in Denver and lived there for a month. I loved being able to see where he had lived, where the training center was and places he had been. It was neat to see these places other than pictures he had shown to me.

One place he had talked about a lot was a mongollian grill place in downtown Denver. It was called BD's. He knows I love mongollian grill, so this place was the be all end all of them. Sorry YC's but this place made you look like chumps. I had steak mixed in with my noodles. And little potatoes, and just about everything else I could cram into the bowl. Yum. If I was a seafood person they had it ALL. I won't be forgetting this place, and I guarantee that the next time I'm in Denver I'm going to be craving that! - Can you tell I'm totally motivated by food?

We were only in the restaurant for about 30 minutes, but when we came out the sky was gray and it was getting colder. After we got back on the interstate, there were snow flurries, but I found out on the news later that day that we had stayed just ahead of a storm that had dumped 7 inches of snow on Denver! Talk about lucky. That would have slowed us down a lot.

Oh, and Denver officially has the longest dang airport in the world. I swear it went on for MILES.

So now picture fields of hay bales and red barns. Kansas - which I have to add a disclaimer that I enjoyed Kansas, it just seemed long. I've been through Texas... which is exactly why we chose this route. I wanted to avoid Texas at all costs. Sorry any Texans out there... but been there, done that and don't plan on driving through again. It's like that movie Groundhog Day. You keep waking up in hotels and you are STILL in Texas. Couldn't they have split that state up a bit??

Kansas was pretty. I was just ancy to get to Kentucky. I loved seeing the farms. I never got tired of seeing them. It was like God's playground of Fisher Price little people farms. Huge bright red barns, with silos and windmills and green tractors. Farms and animals. And those adorable hay bales.

(Picture more photos of hay bales and red barns because those photos are on a different camera.)

Why do states outside of the western US have these nice welcome centers, and we don't? I honestly remember stopping at them when we moved from Florida when I was a kid. These aren't your typical rest stops. Oh no... they are monuments to the state you are in. I started to notice signs that said "Tornado shelter." Um, what?? Kerry doesn't do tornados. I'm just glad I didn't have to rush into one of these places to wait one out. Holy cow that has to be scary. I do enjoy Arizona's lack of natural disaster type weather, earthquakes and volcanos. ;)

We stopped in Kansas City, Kansas for the night.