Grocery Shopping, A New Brewery, Pinball, and A Walk to the Power and Light District

 Kansas City, MO

Francis enjoying the grass at the Penn Valley Off Leash Dog Park

Penn Valley Off Leash Dog Park

This morning we had our coffee and then went to the Penn Valley Off Leash Dog Park to celebrate the cooler weather.  It didn't get above 80 this morning and it was overcast.  The park was pretty empty because it was a Monday morning.  Francis did get to meet a few dogs but mostly had the giant park to himself so we got him to run around and tire himself out.  

He moves quickly and is hard to photograph sometimes.

Doggie meet and greet

He stood still for a second so Donna could snap this photo

Francis playing keep away with me.

So we have taken Francis to an off leash dog park in Denver, McKinney, and Kansas City on this trip.

Grocery Shopping and Navigating the Highway System

After the dog park, Donna and I dropped off Francis and then hit the road to pick up groceries.  We decided to try out Aldi which is about 2 miles away. Aldi is known for being cheap and no frills.  When we got there we realized we needed to use a quarter to unlock a shopping card.  You get your quarter back when you return your cart but when you don't have a quarter, you don't get a cart and they don't seem to have hand baskets so it was a bad start for us.  Aldi has a minimum selection of brands per item too so they can save money.  They have their house brand and then 1 or 2 more brands and that is it.  If you go to the chip isle you have like 3 choices of brand and 5 choices of styles so each section in the grocer store is pretty small.  They don't have an entire isle of chips and pre-popped popcorn, just small section.  As we carried groceries around in our arms we realized that we wouldn't be able to carry it all and we wouldn't find everything we needed so we put back the perishable items and just bought a few things.  

We went to the car and looked for a "regular" grocery store on our phones and found Price Choppers about 7 miles away.  We set directions and headed out.  It is really hard to navigate KC if you don't know where you are going.  All of the highways converge at KC so it has one of the most dense highways systems.

At one point the phone was giving us directions and couldn't keep up with them.  The interchanges were coming faster than the phone could talk so I ended up headed down the wrong freeway.  As we were circling back we found Sun Fresh Market.  We abandoned the Price Chopper idea and found our way to Sun Fresh Market and we are glad we did.  It was a great Mexican market with good prices and a really great selection.  This will probably be our new grocery store while we are here and we get to to to Kansas every time we go there which is novel.  

The Tortilla Maker at Sun Fresh Market

New Brewery and Pinball in KC

We made the trip home without getting lost and put away our groceries and then headed to the River Market area to pick up a few things at the Chinatown Grocery Store and then pressed on to River Bluff Brewing.  They have great beers and 3 pinball machines.  The Star Wars machine had a free game on it and we figured out why, it was very generous in giving away free matches and the high scores for free games were pretty low.  Donna and I got to play about 3x the number of games we would have if we didn't win free games.

Evening Walk

When we got home we grabbed Francis and went on a long walk to and through The Power and Lights District because it was so nice and cool.  It was a Monday night so nothing was going on.  It gave us a chance to see this normally hopping place empty.  

Reflection Selfie

It felt a lot like City Walk or Downtown Disney or something like that

The liquor law has a special carve out for this district that allows open containers.  More on that when I get to my MO Liquor Laws post.

The KC Streetcar cuts right through the district

Today was a great day in KC and it marked our first full week here.  There is still so much to do and see.  If you missed yesterday's adventure, you can find it here.