Woke this morning to the pitter patter of little feet raindrops on the window. Oh yikes, more rain. I guess we didn’t give the Sun god the proper offering. We may have to sacrifice more Skittles this afternoon.

We headed off east again about 11 am to Lawrence, KS. Still can’t believe how green it is around here. When we’re in Portland with visitors, they always say, “It’s so green and beautiful here”. Now I know what they’re seeing. I don’t know if that made sense, but it does to me.

Just outside of Topeka on I-70 we came upon a toll booth! I haven’t seen one of these since I was about ten years old and we would cross the Columbia River on the I-5 Bridge. I guess they’re paying for new access to some towns and new bridges on I-70.

Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas. This is a great little city that has renovated the downtown area into a youthful and vibrant community. We drove up and down the main drag and were amazed at all the nice shops and eateries. It was very busy in town as it is graduation weekend at UK. Lawrence would be a good place to live.

We left Lawrence behind after eating lunch at that wonderful Scottish restaurant, McDonald’s. Continued eastward to Kansas City, MO. We were going to visit the ‘National World War I Museum’ when we arrived in KC (I know, the WHAT?? It did get a GEM rating in AAA), but as we reached the city we found traffic backing up at our off ramp. Wondering “what the heck?”, we found out a little later as we wended our way around barricades and throngs of people, that there was a “ROCKFEST 2010” concert today with over 50,000 people in attendance. Lucky us! Our hotel was just down the street from all this mayhem, so it took a little maneuvering around to get there. Oh yeah… the museum we wanted to go to was right in the middle of it all! We didn’t go. Instead we went to a “shopping village” called Country Club Plaza. We wandered around for about an hour and a half, and then ate an early dinner at Cheesecake Factory. We took a piece of peanut butter/chocolate cheesecake back to the hotel for a snack later.

Looks like we will be adding an extra day in KC so that we can fit in all that we want to see and do. Need to visit a few of the barbeque diners and taste some of that famous flavor.

As an added note, we have other travelers in the family right now. Emily is in NYC with her friend, Kristina, on a business/sightseeing trip. Check out Emily’s blog at PDX Home Life.

Bryan is in Hawaii with some of his buddies for a bachelor party trip. His close friend Ryley is getting married in July.

Til we meet again, I remain your “we’re not in Kansas anymore” correspondent.