McCarthy Midwest Tours, to Kansas

Then our tour traveled south, to Kansas City. It's amazing to think about how far you can go in the U.S. without turning. There is one highway, I-35, that goes from Duluth, Minnesota to Laredo, Texas. So you can drive from almost-Canada to the Mexico border on the same road. Brian and I have done the Saint Paul to Kansas City stretch over and over. But the familiar stretches of I-35 led us to an unfamiliar place this time. As part of our Midwest tour, we visited the site where the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed in 1959. It's near Clear Lake, Iowa. But really it's in somebody's corn field.

The glasses are the only thing that marks the way to the crash site

This is when I make a side comment about traveling without a smart phone, GPS, or even a map. My husband wrote down very good directions. There are some moments, though, when having one of these devices (the kind that beeps, or the kind that folds) would have helped.

We got a little lost on the gravel roads and made a nervous Sankey, our foreign celebrity, get out and ask a real Iowa farmer for directions. We were headed to the only place that an out-of-towner would try to find on the outskirts of Clear Lake. That farmer already knew the question before he heard that English accent.

In Kansas City we moved fast. We juggled visits with Brian's mom, dad, stepmom and with barbecue-eating and sightseeing. Friends made a huge effort to see us (or to see Brian, really). Joe flew his whole family in from Baltimore, while Nick somehow managed a long weekend trip from Orlando, and then there were all the people nearby to see... the hardest part was not having quite enough time.

This was the suburban part of the Midwestern tour. The Kansas City area never ceases to confuse me with its tangle of highways, streets that are numbered to the triple digits, and the uneasy sense of never quite knowing which state I am in.

Beyond the reach of the strip malls, my father-in-law took us to breakfast at Wanda's, the quintessential small town greasy spoon. Wanda herself was in the kitchen, dishing up portions that I can only describe as American-sized.

This is not Wanda's but an equally cool small-town bar

We also had a great night out in the city, starting with the World War I museum, then to a bar with live jazz, then to a steakhouse (which had been a speakeasy in the 30s) with live jazz.  The Kansas City leg of the trip was challenging for John, a vegetarian who dabbles in veganism. He ate a lot of french fries.

Downtown Kansas City

Me out with the fellas

To top it all off, we went to the Kansas State football game in Manhattan, Kansas. I never claimed to be a football fan, but this was my first big college game and it was a blast. We got in courtesy of chef Mike, a high school friend of Brian's who is now the head chef for K State athletics. We followed the game up by tail-gaiting in a parking lot that backed up to a farm with some goats. It was enough to make me proud to wear purple.

At Bill Snyder stadium

Sankey looks very American, with football, Budweiser, grill and pickup truck

John never eats meat, but now that he's seen this 'eat beef' license plate, he's thinking about it

Buddies of all sizes: Pete, Joe, Brian and chef Mike

While in Manhattan, we slept at a Motel 6. Then we ate breakfast at Denny's. And while we lamented the lack of small-town diners like Wanda's and the fact that Denny was not actually back in the kitchen, we really enjoyed the food. Sankey ordered 'moons over my hammy,' just because he got a kick out of saying it. And as we were packing up to leave the Motel 6, I noticed him talking with a man in a pickup truck. He had struck up a conversation and made a new American friend. After just a week in the U.S., Sankey had come a long way.