Day 30 - Weldon Spring, Hermann & Kansas City, MO

After leaving St Louis, we headed towards a more unusual tourist attraction, Weldon Spring Conservation Area. This site was used during World War 2 as a munition plant, then as a TNT and DNT production plant and finally as a uranium ore processing plant. It was eventually cleaned up and all the toxic material put into a cell (which we climbed to the top of) and is now a nature reserve.

Next stop was a German village called Hermann, located in the wine region of Missouri. It took us a lot longer than planned to reach this stop as there was a road closure and the detour added an hour onto our journey. But it was worth it. The village was really cute with lovely little shops all with a German theme or name. We stopped off at Hermann Wurst Haus where we shared a couple of award winning Bratwursts with sauerkraut and German potato salad. They were excellent! So good, we bought a packet to cook the next night whilst we were camping. This was also the first place so far where we'd seen fruit cider ("hard" cider, not the non-alcoholic type which is more common in rural parts of the US). The Blackberry and Strawberry ciders were lovely, I didn't drink them whilst we were there but I bought a few cans to have in the evenings whist camping.

We had originally planned for Kansas City to be a place where we stop overnight to break the journey up, we hadn't planned to do much sight seeing. We arrived at 816 hotel late afternoon, checked into our room and then hit the bar for happy hour. We thought this hotel was a typical budget hotel but we were blown away when we entered the room. The hotel has a number of themed rooms based on Kansas City history; we were allocated to the KC Star room which was decorated to remember the history of this local news paper.

We then took advantage of the hotels free shuttle service and went into the Power and Light district. Here there are lots of bars and restaurants, it was all very quiet as we were there on a Tuesday but they were still open and mainly filled with business men and women looking for a night away from their hotel or groups of people from a local conference. We got talking to one bar lady who suggested we hop on the free tram a couple of stops to a place called Up-Down. We were a little unsure about going as we didn't want to stray too far out away from the area we knew was 'tourist safe' but after a little googling, decided it was OK so we headed off.

Up-Down was awesome and made us both immediately think of Stranger Things. So glad we went and such a great recommendation. It was bar with lots of arcade machines, each one just 25cents to play. We spent a good couple of hours in here, Lee was beaten by me at pinball (I am the pinball queen!) but he showed his age by being pretty good at the old arcade games!

We headed back to Power and Light where we had the best Nachos of the trip, they were on top of a layer of melted, spicy, cheesy, yumminess and contained everything you could think of on top, including slowly smoked brisket. It was so good, it's making my mouth water just remembering them! The nachos were supposed to be an appetizer but as we have learnt in America, appetizers can be bigger than main meals so luckily we shared and we didn't order any more food. If anyone is visiting Kansas City, the nachos were from County Road Ice House. Do not go to Kansas City without trying them and posting a portion back to me too!

We finished the night in the dueling pianos bar which was fun and the artists playing were good but also made us appreciated the variety and talent in the music bars of NOLA, Memphis and Nashville.

Our journey back to the hotel involved our first ever Uber experience. We hadn't really appreciated Uber until now. When you're in an unknown city and not sure how to order a cab home or where to go looking for one, Uber is such a good tool. We used the app to book a car, knew the car that was going to be picking us up along with the drivers name and picture. When Samantha arrived, we felt safe knowing it was the person we booked and they were background checked and hire by an reputable company, we were not about to be conned or robbed!

I've left the start of our trip into Kansas City until last as it's probably best parents don't read this. On our way into Kansas City, we decided to take a 'short cut' to the hotel which involved coming off the interstate early and going down a residential area. In hindsight, we shouldn't have done this. The residential area was really run down with lots of boarded up houses and sorry looking cars. We ended up driving behind a cop car so decided not to turn around but to carry on. I was thankful for the cop car when we reached a street corner with a number of youngsters looking shifty, the cop car slowed down next to them and they split up and walked away. Seeing the reaction these kids had to the cops made me think they were up to no good. In future, I don't think we'll look for short cuts, we'll keep to the interstate.