Jananas

The last part of our afternoon in Kansas City was spent at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Its by donation to get in & $5 for parking, so between the four of us was $6.50 each. Not shabby! Overall, it wasn’t the best museum/art gallery ever (or maybe Toronto just has me spoilt?), in part because some of the collections were a little random and in part because the old wing was laid out so that much backtracking was required in order to see an entire section. However, we did get to see some neat modern art, some awesome photographs, and a van Gogh… Which I referred to as a “terrible painting” before I realized who is was by. I do, however, stick to my guns. I think that the colour choices are terrible! There was also a particularly creepy statue of a museum guard that was the stuff of horror movies (just imagine him coming to lie and after you!).

We had a little more fun in the giant outdoor sculpture garden. We got to see Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker, which is a pretty unique opportunity.

There were also several of these giant shuttlecocks (you know, from badminton) scattered around the lawn. It was  a bit of a toss up between which won out – the thinker or the shuttlecocks… but Jason seems to think its the latter. From the Museum’s webpage:

“The husband and wife team of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen were commissioned in 1994 to design a sculpture for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. They responded to the formality of the original neoclassical building and the green expanse of its lawn by imagining the Museum as a badminton net and the lawn as a playing field. The pair designed four birdies or shuttlecocks that were placed as though they had just landed on opposite sides of the net. Each shuttlecock weighs 5,500 pounds, stands nearly 18 feet tall and has a diameter of some 16 feet.”

We hung around the big KC for a little while longer, at the Broadstreet Cafe watching people and patting puppy dogs who passed by. Around 6pm, we decided to head out and keep on truckin’. We still had 21 hours to drive to get to Vegas and by getting another 3-4 in that night we’d put enough of a dent in the driving to make the next three days more bearable. We did pass through some nasty rain on the way – heavy enough to make it hard to see and hard to stay on the road. But it definitely looked pretty when the sun shone through the opening in the cloud cover.

We drove long enough that the sunset. Let me tell you, its hard to knit in the dark! I resorted to rolling skeins of yarn into balls instead. And then we lapsed into intense political and life discussions. And we still haven’t killed each other yet. EventuallyJason had had enough driving, so we stopped for the evening in Hays, KC. We crashed out at a Motel 6 – even better is that their wifi is only $2.99, which is totally reasonable.

I had forgotten to mention that on our way to Kansas we listened to the audiobook for Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency which was a resounding hit!