After we take a trip, I like to document our spending and activities. For one, it helps me keep track of where we’ve been and what we did there. But also, it’s meant to show that you can take a trip without extravagant spending.

Mr. ODA and I have a plan to see all the baseball stadiums. I’ve been to 15. He has a few more from childhood. He thought it would be good to get to a new stadium as our Spring Break travel. Kansas City is about 9 hours away, meaning it’s driving distance and we don’t need to pay for 5 flights. We didn’t do much research, but found things to do there. We also took a day to go to Topeka and see the Capitol, which is another favorite thing for me.

WHAT TO DO

Topeka was just over an hour away, so we went there for a day. Honestly, Kansas City was so sketchy feeling that it was a nice break to be somewhere else. We visited the Capitol and did 2 tours (Dome Tour and the regular free historic tour), both of which were free. We then stopped by the Brown v Board of Education site, where we spent a considerable amount of time. We finished up with a stop at the airport where they had an Army museum.

For the Royals Game, they had a Sunday family pass where it was $20 per person. That included upper level seats, a hot dog, a soda, and parking. There’s a monopoly on parking there, which was $21 on it’s own. So we spent $100 on the tickets. Then we spent $6 on coins for the outfield experience, where the kids were able to play putt putt and ride the carousel, which was adorable. We like walking around the whole concourse at stadiums. I was nervous that there wasn’t much to see at this stadium, but the outfield experience was a nice surprise out there. On Sundays, they also let the kids run the bases, so that was a fun experience for them. They went from 1st to 3rd and got a coupon for a free ice cream cone at the end.

There was a WWI Memorial Tower, which was $6 per person to go to the top. I thought we were climbing stairs, but it was an elevator ride. Kids 5 and under were free, so the total cost of this was $18.

We went to the money museum in the Federal Reserve building there. That was really cool, free, and definitely worth the visit. We got to see the vault and how they count money.

Street Car is free. Our house was 2 blocks from the stop. It would have been an easy walk if there weren’t 3 little kids involved. The first block was really long, and the second block was straight up hill. So we opted to drive the two blocks and park right by the stop, but that saved us from paying for parking downtown. Although, there were hardly any people there, so it wasn’t like we would have struggled to find parking, just that we’d have to pay for it.

We tried exploring the city. We stopped at the river walk. There’s a nice mural down there, but otherwise not much of interest. We stopped at the library. It was pretty, and the kids appreciated the ability to play in the kids section and read some books. They were fairly disappointed that they couldn’t check out a book!

We stopped at the art museum. It was free, but it was a real art museum, which is not conducive to 3 little kids. They did great, and they’re not crazy. But man… you don’t realize how many times a kid just casually rubs their hand along something until you’re in a place where you can’t even touch the walls that are holding the art! They had a sculpture garden, so we got to run and have fun after the tension of being inside. There is also an art alley in the city. It’s graffiti art and worth a look, but it doesn’t feel safe when you’re there, so keep your head on a swivel.

We walked the mall, which had a cute little dinosaur exhibit for the kids to play at. And we walked around Union Station. If you have time to kill and want to spend money, there’s plenty for families to do there, but that wasn’t of interest to our type of trip (e.g., childrens museum).

TOTAL COST: $1,577

The AirBnB was a struggle, but it ended up costing $1,077. We had a place booked for about a week, and then she cancelled on us at 6 pm the night before our arrival. The silver lining was that we didn’t get there and have to move to a different place (which we’ve done before). She said the house was without water, but we weren’t able to corroborate that with the city’s water outage map. We contacted AirBnB to address the fact that this was a huge inconvenience, and that there wasn’t anything else in the same price range and location that we wanted. AirBnB was amazing (albeit slow) to work with, and they were very helpful. We were awake until 11 pm trying to solve that situation. They gave us a huge credit to a place in the same location to bring it to about the same price as the original booking. Note that AirBnB owners are able to charge whatever they want under the ‘tax’ section, and that’s not dictated by the area they’re in, which I find fascinating. One place had a 28% tax added, even though everyone else in the area was around 16%.

As we drove in, we were a bit concerned about the area. Houses were boarded up and the whole area just looked desolate. When we got to the house, I happened to check a window and see that it was unlocked. I then proceeded to check the rest of the windows only to find that in a 3 story building, only 3 windows were locked upon our arrival. That gave me an eerie feeling and clouded the trip. One window couldn’t even be locked because I could hold the locking mechanism in my hand. It took them until the last full day of our trip to get there with 2 screws to put it together, so that was annoying. We also had a weird experience on the last night where it sounded like someone was trying to enter via the key pad. That brings me to another AirBnB complaint: there should be a way to lock guests into the house at night. I don’t like that there’s no extra locking mechanism on top of the keypad once I’m inside.

Kansas City gas was $3.29-3.39, while Lexington KY was sitting at $3.99. That was a nice surprise when we got there. Our total gas cost was $125.

We eat most of our meals at the AirBnB when we travel. Three little kids who are picky eaters just doesn’t yield to much fun when we go to a restaurant. We did travel into Kansas for a BBQ meal. Otherwise, we grabbed quick meals on the go or ate at the house. This kept our eating expense to $251 for a family of 5, gone for 5 days.

OVERALL

The officials there seem to be working on the city. I don’t know if it’s related to FIFA hosting or just a general need to build it back up, and what this place may have been a few years ago. The city itself is actually very clean. There wasn’t trash and graffiti all over. But it gave a very heavy ‘abandoned’ feeling. There were hardly any professionals walking around during the work day. There were hardly any cars parked on the street or in the garages. The Census claims over 500k people in the city limits, and I absolutely didn’t get that feeling. There was a large homeless population. As the week wore on, I realized they really kept to themselves. They weren’t asking for handouts and they just existed around us, but it was overwhelming when we first got there.

We’ve been really busy around here, so my goal of the trip was to relax and not feel rushed. We brought the kids’ scooters and let them play outside at the house a good bit. We never felt rushed to get to the next place and were happy just seeing the sights versus doing things that we could do at home (like a childrens museum).