Somewhere in Middle America

kansas city on a hot summer day

On Saturday Jamie and I took a road trip to Kansas City. Our primary goal was to return or exchange gifts we had each received for our weddings (she got married a month after I did) and to use our 10% off completion coupon to buy what remained on our registries. A trip to the plaza was also on our agenda, as we both wanted to go to Anthropologie, Paper Source and American Apparel, among other stores.

Here’s a rundown of our day spent in KC by the numbers.

360 = Approximate numbers of miles we traveled roundtrip

2.5 = Hours spent at Crate & Barrel

3 = Number of bags containing Jamie’s purchases from C&B

12 = Number of bags and boxes containing my purchases from C&B

2 = Number of fast food meals eaten in 12 hours. Lunch at McDonald’s and a snack at Wendy’s on our drive home.

25 = Percentage we got off on our purchases from Anthropologie thanks to Jamie’s sister’s Friends & Family discount.

1 = Number of travel centers we stopped at on our way home. SAPP BROS, somewhere in Iowa, is a site to be seen.

4 = Number of folding knives in a collectibles kit available at SAPP BROS — and on sale!

45 – Minutes listening to “Learn Italian” CD. (io capisco un po l’taliano)

1,000,000 = Degrees it felt like outside as we walked up hills, down hills and in circles

Jamie’s bags

My boxes and bags

More of my purchases

Lunch

The craziest gas station store ever

Knives on sale

Watches and wax

kansas or missouri?

On Saturday J and I took a trip down to Kansas City for the day. We passed a lot of nothing on our three hour drive. We knew we hit Missouri when hills started appearing on our left; Iowa is flat, flat, flat. But once we got down to KC, I had no idea if we were in Kansas or Missouri. We probably went back and forth between the two all afternoon.

After checking out a Nordstrom in a suburb of KC (I bought a red puffy winter jacket), we spent the remainder of our afternoon walking around The Country Club Plaza, an outdoor shopping center with stores we don’t have in Omaha, like Anthropologie, MAC and Betsey Johnson. Ironically, we did the most damage at Urban Outfitters, which recently opened in Omaha. This one, however, was much bigger and had great housewares on sale.

For dinner we went to M&S Grill, a more contemporary variation of McCormick & Schmick’s. The food was pretty good but the service was terrible. They forgot to bring out part of our dinner — shrimp — and when they did we couldn’t eat it because it wasn’t fully cooked! Of course we sent it back, and the manager came to our table to apologize, but they didn’t compensate us at all. In my experience, when the kitchen messes up big time on your order, you don’t have to pay for it. Not this time.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t spend the night in KC because I had to be at work at 9am the next day. We started the drive back close to 10pm. It was a lot of driving in one day–for J. I have a hard time driving long distances because I get highway hypnosis. Seriously. While J drove us back, I watched Borat on his laptop with the sound coming out of the car stereo. That definitely helped to make the time pass quickly! Can you believe I had never seen it before?! The bear sequence might have been my favorite part.

Here are a couple of photos from our adventure:

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