Day One! Rockwall to Independence, Missouri

We rolled out of Rockwall at 8 a.m. this morning!  This is the lightest we've ever packed, everything fit in the car perfectly.

Our first stop was at the Oklahoma state line...

We hit Tulsa about lunchtime.  Our goal is not to eat at chain restaurants during our trips, so I downloaded the TV food app.  It lists all the restaurants featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, Man vs. Food etc.  We chose Joe Momma's Pizza!  Adam from Man vs. Food tried to eat 10 slices of their Incinerator pizza with habanero peppers, jalepenos and a ghost chili swirl.  Food won, Adam didn't even make it thru that one.  We were not so adventurous, but the pizza was excellent! 

After we ate we went to see the World's Largest Praying Hands!  They are the entrance to Oral Roberts University.  Thomas is our official trip photographer since his birthday present was a new fancy Canon camera.  He had some fun with this one...

After that it was a loooong drive through Kansas.  After a while though there were some hills, and by the time we hit Topeka it was actually very pretty.  Topeka was not what I expected.  It's like a city frozen in time.  I kinda felt like I was back in the 50's.  Our stop here was Monroe Elementary School.

 This is the neighborhood school where Oliver Brown tried to enroll his daughter Linda in 1953 but was told he would have to take her across town to the colored school.  The case became the landmark civil rights case that declared separate was NOT equal...Brown vs. the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas.    Being that I was a social science major and an education major I studied this case over and over and over in college.

 It is a beautiful school built in 1921.  It became a museum in 1991.  But, it still feels like a school, in a quiet little neighborhood.  There was even sidewalk chalk left from earlier children's activities at the museum...

I simply can't imagine school, where even after this verdict. students entered every day to this...

I was so proud of the kids reaction to this stop.  They were genuinely bummed that we arrived at 5:30 and the museum closed at 5:00.  They all 3 took tons of pictures and asked great questions.  What more could this history teacher momma ask for?!

From Topeka it's not very long at all to Kansas City.  We went to the Crown Center and hit the Crayola store much to Mandy's excitement!

There was also a Lego store!

We had dinner at an awesome burger joint called Fritz's.  We ordered our food on the phone in the booth and it was delivered to us by a train on a track above our head and lowered down to our table!    Thanks Aunt Christie for giving us the low down on what not to miss.  Huge hit for everyone!

Kansas City is very pretty.  It's incredibly clean with tons of stuff to do and some beautiful architecture in it's old buildings.  I told Scott we need to be on the look out for a conference or two to speak at in Kansas City. This is a place I wouldn't mind coming back to and exploring a little more in depth.

Amazing how quickly everyone got in the "travel groove" today.  Our kids are such awesome travelers.  They colored, read and even played games....with each other!  Lenny the Lizard, our mascot from previous road trips, is back....

Lenny was picked up several years ago from some roadside souvenir stop.  He moves around in the car during the trip and gets into a bit of trouble.  Today he rode on the rearview mirror.  He's been joined by Bucee Beaver, who many of you may recognize from the popular Texas gas station chain...

What can I say, Scott needs things to keep him amused while driving us all over the nation.

Tomorrow we have much less time in the car.  We are hanging out here in Independence, Mo for awhile so that we can go to the Truman library ( yea, can't wait!!) and have some Kansas City style BBQ!

Traveler Blessings,

Leslie