golf – Page 2 – The Adventures of Mike and Cindy

This post is about the rest of our return trip to our house in St. Joseph, Missouri minus a side trip Cindy and I did to Hannibal, Missouri, which will be its own post.

MIDDLE OF JUNE

This post starts with us taking our adopted parents, Nancy and Denby (Scott’s real parents), to a taco dinner at Smooth Endings. They were in town watching Scott and Heather’s dogs while they were away on a family vacation.

My guess is this was their first time eating tacos in the back of the liquor store. Also, possibly their last, but they were great sports about it. We love going to Smooth Endings ourselves. If you are looking for a neat place to have a drink, or somewhere to buy some drinks to go, or even looking for cigars, Smooth Endings is the place to visit. And every Friday, Adrian’s Tacos is there serving up fresh and delicious tacos. Check it out for yourself using the link at the end of this post. Starting in 2025, St. Joseph has an arena football team, the St. Joseph Goats.

They play at the Civic Center in downtown. Of course we had to see a game. We saw them play the Iowa Woo. Our seats were just a few rows away from the field with a great view. Here are the goats warming up before the game.

There were tables and seats right next to the field. The out of bounds for the field is the wall where the table and seats are. It allows for a very close game experience.

Unfortunately, it was too close of an experience for one of the fans who was sitting at the wall and not paying attention. They ended up taking a helmet to the face at full speed.

If you are lucky enough to get seats by the field wall, pay attention. The game was really exciting. Arena football is a very fast paced high scoring game. Our game was tied 28-28 at half time.

With 26 seconds left in the game, the Goats were down 74-60. We thought the game was over.

But 10 seconds later, they scored a touchdown and were down by only 7 points with 16 seconds left in the game.

The Goats did an onside kick off, got the ball back, and scored one play later.

With four seconds left in the game, they missed the extra point and lost by one. It was a really exciting ending to a fun game. After the game both teams showed great sportsmanship by meeting at midfield for a prayer and camaraderie.

We will definitely see some more games next year. If you want to join us, use the link at the end of this post to get your tickets. Later in the month we had a lot of thunderstorms. Once again, Scott and Heather were the worse victims of the weather. They had lightning strike a large tree in their yard and do a number on it.

After the lightning drama, we all went to the Den for their monthly new drink tasting. We had bought Bobby some goat ears and horns to wear to the next Goat’s game. Here he is modeling them at the Den.

The tasting was up to the Den’s usual high standards. It started with the My-Jito which was a play on a Mojito. I really enjoyed.

Next up was the Sage of Innocence. Not my favorite, but others seemed to enjoy it.

The third drink was one of my favorites. Of course it had bourbon in it. It was named Vegas baby.

Next was a take on a dirty martini. It was called a Dirty Girl and was my second favorite drink of the night.

The last drink of the night had two of my least favorite flavors, basil and absinthe. It was called the Green Thai Affair and I gave mine away after a tiny sip.

As usual, the Den earned itself a link. You know where it is. While we were sipping away, it poured rain outside.

Luckily for us, it stopped raining right as we were leaving so we stayed dry on the way home. The month ended with Scott and I going to Kauffman Stadium to see the Royals play the defending World Series Champions (and also current back-to-back champions) Los Angeles Dodgers. The game was sold out and it looked like everyone showed up.

We had amazing seats several rows from right field.

The game started with the Dodgers’ first batter, Shohei Ohtani, hitting a home run to right field right in front of Scott and I. The Dodgers ultimately won the game, but the Royals kept it close.

JULY

July started with a golf trip to Mound City. After golf, we had lunch at Toad Hollar. They have a hilarious bathroom. Check it out.

We had plans to spend the fourth of July with Scott and Heather. To prepare for the evening, we stopped at Border War Fireworks. It is basically a giant warehouse filled with fireworks.

I loved how they had a “Kid’s Pack” of explosives.

On the night of the fourth, we hung with Scott and Heather and lit off all of our collective fireworks.

This took us to the part of the trip where we decided to sell our house that doesn’t have a basement and buy one that does. All along, we had been doing small home improvements, and we spent our last few days in Missouri finishing up all of our projects. Our plan was to return in October and list the house. We flew back to California and realized we should have talked to our realtor before deciding when the best time was to sell in Missouri. We made the call and learned our best shot at selling was over the summer because sales really slowed down in the fall and were even slower in the winter. Our little oversite caused us to hop back on a plane to Missouri, spent two frantic days preparing the house to be shown at open houses, then drive back to California in two days. That was a crazy five days. A future post will detail how the home sale went and where we ended up.

My next post will be about our trip to Hannibal, Missouri, Samuel Clemens hometown. Until then, feel free to visit a few open houses.

LINKS

Smooth Endings

St. Joseph Goats

The Den

This post was originally going to be about the second half of our return to our house in St. Joseph, MO. But we did so much fun stuff, I’m splitting the second half into two posts.

MAY

Early in the month, Don, Scott, Bobby, and I played in a golf tournament at the Fairview Golf Course. We played respectably but did not finish in the top ten.

A few days later, Cindy and I tried hiking at the River Bluff Trails Park. This is a park that has both hiking and off-road bicycle trails. The bike trails were no joke so we will definitely stick to the hiking trails.

If you are a serious mountain biker, or just looking for some interesting hiking trails, you should check this park out. Use the link below and strap on your hiking boots. After hiking, we had lunch at the B & B Runway Cafe at Rosecrans Memorial Airport. The Airport is a large general aviation / military joint-use airport located 3 miles northwest of St. Joseph and 35 miles north of Kansas City. The cafe had just been remodeled and was brand new. It is open for breakfast and lunch and is in the building with the current control tower.

The new control tower was being built behind the cafe and current control tower.

The cafe is next to a runway and provided an excellent view. There were a few C130’s parked near the cafe on our visit.

Besides the excellent view, the service was outstanding and the food was pretty good too. We both had the BBQ Pork Taco special.

The whole package made this a must visit, so use the link below to get your airplane and grub fix. The next evening, Scott, Heather, Machelle, Bobby, and I went to the Den for trivia night. Only four teams played and we managed to finish third. Here was our prize.

Our first trivia award! The next night there was a live band downtown. This prompted Don, Marie, Scott, Heather, Bobby, Machelle, Cindy, and I to eat dinner on the patio at Felix Street Gourmet.

Clockwise L to R: Me, Cindy, Machelle, Marie, Don, Heather, Scott

A few days later, a nasty storm blew in. In the early evening, a Tornado Watch was issued. That meant tornados were possible in the area, but none had been reported or seen on radar. I went outside to check the weather and the clouds in the sky were boiling.

That is an indicator of severe weather and was not a good sign. Our safe spot in our house was an interior half bathroom since we did not have a basement. Here it is ready to go in case of a tornado. And yes, those are bike helmets in case we needed them.

At 8:36pm, the sirens on our phone sounded and we received a Tornado Warning. That meant a tornado was either seen on radar or seen on the ground. We went into our safe place and put our helmets on.

At the same time our phones were issuing the tornado warning, the outside Tornado Siren started to wail. I checked my weather app and saw there was a tornado indicated about 10 miles southwest of us heading in our direction.

The actual weather around the tornado didn’t look that bad, so we were hoping it was a radar indicated tornado and had not touched down. After a few minutes, the outside siren went off, and the tornado symbol disappeared from the radar. We breathed a sigh of relief. But it was short lived. At 8:43pm, the outside sirens sounded again, and the tornado symbol reappeared on the weather app, only this time, it was about 7 miles southwest of us. It was now on target to barely miss us and hit Scott and Heather’s house instead. It was also in an area of really bad weather, so it was probably a tornado on the ground this time. We texted Scott and Heather to warn them and returned to our half bathroom shelter and our helmets.

After a very long minute, the outside siren went off again, and the tornado symbol disappeared from the radar. We remained in our half bathroom hiding spot hoping for the best. A minute later, 8:45pm to be exact, the outside sirens sounded for a third time and the tornado symbol reappeared on the weather map. This time, it was about 4 miles southwest of us and was on track to go between us and Scott and Heather, assuming it didn’t change course again. It was still in a really bad weather area, so it could be on the ground.

This time the siren stayed on for a few minutes before going off for good. We checked on Scott and Heather and they were safe, but had a tree down in their yard that just missed their house and carriage house.

The next day the weather service confirmed an EF0 tornado had been down near us. An EF0 tornado typically has wind speeds of 65-85 mph. It is the lowest intensity on the Enhanced Fujita scale. More than half of all reported tornados are classified as EF0. Damage from an EF0 tornado is typically light, causing minor damage to trees and signs, and some damage to roofs. The news reported the tornado had not made it to our or Scott and Heather’s neighborhood, but when I went to their house to help Scott with the downed tree, there was enough damage at their house and some of their neighbors’ houses to make me believe the tornado had come through their neighborhood. Here is some of the damage in their yard.

And here is the large tree that split and half of it came down in the driveway between the house and the carriage house.

After several hours of going at the tree with chainsaws, we were able to reduce it to this.

This storm, and our lack of a basement, really got our attention. But more on that in a future post. A week later, the whole gang was back at the Den for their monthly “New Drink Tasting.”

They had mini charcuterie snacks to enjoy before the tasting.

And an interesting lineup of new drinks.

As usual, there were some really good ones and a few that were not for me. The first two were not for me.

The Cody to Go was pretty good and I was not a fan of the By the Gin of My Teeth.

I really like these two.

The Den is always link worthy. Check it out on my Blog Links page. At the end of the month, Scott was able to get he and I tickets to a KC Royals game. They played the Detroit Tigers and unfortunately, lost 7-5.

After the game, they had a firework show.

JUNE

June started off with the whole gang going to the Kansas City Zoo and Aquarium.

As you can guess, there were a lot of animals. Here is a sea otter.

Some monkeys.

Birds.

A sloth.

Some napping kangaroos.

The hippos were popular.

So popular, Machelle and Bobby had to ride some.

They even had some dinosaur displays.

We ran out of time, so we did not visit the aquarium part of the zoo. Overall, it is a nice zoo. Not quite link worthy, but a nice zoo worth visiting when in Kansas City. About a week later, Don and Marie invited the gang to go to Don’s nephew’s lake house on Lake Viking. It was their yearly get together with live music. The front of the house looked like a small house, but it was deceptive.

It was built into the side of a hill, very close to the water.

The back side showed how big the house really was.

There was a concrete area behind the house where a singer played for a few hours.

We all had a great time. On the way home, there was a beautiful sunset.

The next week we all went to the city’s “Party on the Parkway.” These are events the city hosts at different parks along the parkway (a series of bicycle and walking trails). The event is held once a month during the summer and there are vendors and a live band. They are very popular.