Rain or shine, intrepid group of friends walks through the treasures of Kansas City
Let me tell you about the finest rainy-day hike in the Kansas City area, bar none. I happen to be an expert, since for six years friends and I have worn this metro raw with weekly marches across it, back and forth, and up and down hill and valley.
So choose a rainy day (or a cold day or a hot one) and park in the covered lot west of Union Station, a $5 charge unless you find street parking nearby. Ride the soaring escalator eastward up into the Beaux-Arts lobby of this magnificent building, constructed more than 110 years ago. Ponder the majesty of this space, with its three 3,500-pound chandeliers.
Coming from my hometown of Tulsa, I was bowled over at age 9 in 1944 when, to change trains, my German-born father steered me here through crowds of uniformed soldiers. We were on our way to visit my cousin, Hans, in an Algona, Iowa, prisoner of war camp. Hans had been captured in North Africa along with the last of Rommel’s army. As an American soldier myself, I visited Hans 23 years later in his German forest home.
Today, Union Station wields a carnival of attractions: a rail history exhibit, a planetarium, a science center and a movie theater. But we hike onward, eastward again, up the stairs (or elevator), then onto the Link, an air-conditioned causeway maybe 40 feet above the street. It leads first into the Crown Center hotel to what (if you turn right) might be the world’s loveliest indoor waterfall, cascading 65 feet across limestone ledges original to this hillside.
We move onward, past shops and beckoning food joints — but no, we are are not tempted. We cross airy bridges over streets and soon reach the Sheraton Hotel, once the Hyatt Regency. A friend of mine attended the tea dance here on a dreadful day in 1981. Standing with friends directly under the skywalks, she noticed people leaving from chairs in an alcove near McGee Street.
“Let’s take those seats,” she said.
And they did, only minutes before the skywalks crashed down, killing 114 people. At that time, it was the second deadliest structural collapse in American history. My friend was shaken but unhurt. Lucky for her. Lucky for me.
Today, with its gleaming sculpture soaring overhead, that same lobby radiates beauty. So we cross over a sturdy new bridge to the elevator atrium. Then it’s up, up, 504 feet to the foyer of the former Skies rotating restaurant.
What a view of downtown we discover there, with the antique curved brick wall of the old Western Auto building facing us. Better yet is the rest of that view from 45 stories: the graceful Kauffman Center for Performing Arts and the distant river with planes soaring up from Downtown Airport.
Now we spin around, zip down on the elevator and stride back to Union Station, thus chalking up a one-mile round trip. Here the streetcar awaits like some extravagant carriage of bygone days. We ride two miles northward, hop off at Third Street, (time to open the umbrellas if it’s raining) walk westward to Main Street and turn north again toward the elevated Town of Kansas Pedestrian Bridge.
There we encounter another grand overlook with the Missouri River now up close, ASB Railroad Bridge to the east and the Buck O’Neil Memorial Bridge to the west. Then we ride the streetcar back to the station and our cars before the next act.
Which is coffee time at the end of every Thursday walk. We squeeze in around a cafe or park table somewhere. Over the next hour or two, conversation pour forth, the flow from one pal submerging others. Then someone else kicks up a ripple, and on it goes.
With our regular leader, Debbie Lane, vacationing in South Carolina, one walker recently emailed her a list of topics we debated, among them quack remedies, mountain bikes, poison ivy, taxes (how the rich get richer, blah blah), the Amish, Warren Buffett, a yak in the classroom, Louis Armstrong, e-bikes and tricycles for adults.
What a walk, what a talk, what fun.
Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.
