I remember a much, much smaller Mitsuwa in Honolulu, where I snagged dinner at least a couple times while we were staying in Waikiki. This is a much much larger store, with an entire food court. One reason I had picked it is my love for yakitori. The yakitori shop there was not anything you'd call the height of the form...it is a food court after all, and they were cooking over gas, not charcoal. We got negima and tsukune. Pete, who loved the tsukune at Torimatsu, was less a fan of these, and I'd agree, although I found them pleasant enough.
Next up I went to the udon shop and ordered a single small bowl of beef curry udon...which ended up being huge, and was too much for us all to even share (with the other things we ordered). Udon shops like in Honolulu at least often also sell tempura, so I got a couple shrimp skewers, lotus root, and karaage.
At this point the kids mostly had eyes for the crepe shop...which had a terribly long line, so after standing in line until they had ordered, I swapped places with Debra who stayed with the kids and I went shopping in the ordinary store part of the shop. The kids finally got their crepes at least.
After I secured my haul (furikake, yuzukosho, ichimi togarashi, taruzake, a cedar sake cup, imo shochu, and some pocky for the kids) they were a bit worn from all the crowds and lines so we left for the hotel. Debra, recognizing that this was probably a fair indication of what Japan would actually be like, is less bullish on our idea of going to Japan for our 25th anniversary, now. We will see. We got back to the hotel and watched one of the Despicable Mes, I have no idea the plot of any of them, but this one had Trey Parker in it (allegedly he did it because he wanted his young daughter to be able to watch something with him in it).
Next morning we hopped up relatively early, and burned a Starbucks giftcard at a local location (no hotel breakfast here, alas), before driving into town for our first actual destination (Mitsuwa was just a fun extra for me, anyway), the Field Museum. It wasn't quite open yet so we walked to the lake first.
Red winged blackbirds, which I don't see a lot of in KC. Maybe we are outside their range slightly.
Walking out towards the Plane'arium. Gosh that is an old joke, and one that wasn't even funny then. Wow, season 2, 1998.
The view back towards the city.
It's a pretty lake. A couple guys out fishing along the edge.
But back on track, getting into the museum. Apparently their card reader stopped working at one point, and they ended up giving us "all access" hand written armbands. They probably shouldn't have, but I dunno, we may have gotten in for free! Bonus!
Gretchen was hard to pull away from this one. Apparently this particular cat ate six people. At least we didn't have Dahmer taxidermied.
Into the ancient Egyptian section...a smaller mummy.
Admittedly quite macabre are the unwrapped mummies, this one of a child.
Another partially unwrapped one, the preservation is astounding.
We've seen these guys before, elephant seals...decidedly less smelly than on the central Californian coast.
Massive PNW totems in the main hall.
Obviously the elephants and dinosaurs are cool too, but the architecture is nice!
Then, because we inadvertently had "all access" passes, we went through a paid section, happily titled "DEATH", where lots of miscellaneous death-themed exhibits were on display, including a model of a Chinese torture method, I think...we breezed through it kind of quick (it was bumming out Peter, our resident chipper Spongebob-type).
It dumps you out into "Death! The Gift Shop!". So weird.
Then through a Mesoamerican section, which I'm not going to even try to identify things correctly on...I can tell you these were Zapotec, because it's right there in the pic.
Still in the Aztec/Zapotec/Mayan/or-something-similar section.
These masks were from the Pacific Northwest cultures I believe.
Bear with human faces on its paws. See it's true! BEARS WILL TAKE YOUR FACE OFF
This was in a generalized all-about-animals edutainment section, and I mean...come on guys, did you really need to do this
Now onto what we are mostly here for, taxidermied dead animals. Foxes here.
An elk. Looking at the space between the ...whatever you call the back bones above the ribcage, to the ribcage...imagine the size of the backstrap on that chap! But also, can't imagine hauling one of those out of the woods.
Cheetahs.
A very vicious looking Malabar Giant Squirrel, probably shot in self-defense I'm sure.
More large cats...
If loving you is binturong...
I don't want to be right
If the bearcat exhibit is gonna get cancelled
I'd rather binturong than right
The friends of the zoo say that "It's boring"
"Another animal should have its place"
But as long as I've got a bearcat exhibit
I don't care what those people say
Wikipedia tells me that its nocturnal
And has a shrinking habitat
If cornered it can be quite dangerous
But I don't care about that
If loving you is binturong, I don't want to be right
If loving you is binturong, I don't want to be binturight
Am I wrong to think that this exhibit is really great
A binturong here in Kansas City
It seems it must be fate
And am I wrong to wonder
If the zookeepers care enough
Knowing they have so many animals
Who need them just as much
Am I wrong to think that this
Is neither bear, nor a cat?
And am I wrong trying to hold on to
The best exhibit the zoo ever had
If loving you is binturong I don't wanna be right
If loving you is binturong I don't wanna be binturight
I don't wanna be right
If it means losing the binturong
I don't wanna be right
If it means losing the binturong
(I wrote that song before the binturong at the KC Zoo died or left the zoo, so seeing this guy again...brought back the song in a flood of emotions...)
Some ursus...ursi?
Gretchen said she wanted to look at every single one of the birds in this massive, massive hall of just birds. I went down to the end and walked back and was like, that will take probably four hours. Gretchen compromised!
Toothy chap up close from the second floor, as we headed off to the Pacific Islander section.
There was probably a bit more Micronesian and Melanesian artifacts than Polynesian, although there was a decent amount of all three.
Barbed spears, most likely for fishing.
Various weapons of war (and other uses).
The more ornate ones, likely were ceremonial for rituals.
Slit drums...
The Maori hale. I don't know Maori so not sure what it would be called...whare? So often with Polynesian languages the words are the same, just sub out a few consonants.
Interior of the ...it IS whare!...in this case wharenui (nui means large in Hawaiian too).
Chinese weapons.
Model of a Chinese sailing vessel.
Then over to the dinosaur exhibit. The family was running on fumes in terms of museum endurance.
It was pretty busy (families with little kids, naturally).
Either a velociraptor or its older cousin, Deinonychus.
Irish elk, big fella.
A massive giant sloth.
Pete got into jigsaw puzzles with Debra back in the early days of the pandemic. This is much the same sort of thing.
Actual skull of Sue, their resident T-Rex.
The fully assembled version (with replica skull).
Then we exited, and headed off to a cart to grab the requisite Chicago dog.
I guess you just call these "gulls" because there is no sea around for quite some ways. They were only modestly aggressive.
So by this point...our original plan was to go back to the car and then go to the Science and Industry Museum. We'd been twice when the kids were younger, and it has a cool captured U-boat. But like I said...we were running on fumes in terms of museum tolerance at this point. And we would have to spend another princely sum to park in their garage too...so we hit on the idea of instead just going to the Shedd Aquarium which was right there...saving on parking since we'd already paid the full amount there, and actual non-stuffed animals might be more interesting. So over to the Shedd we went!
...and we promptly realized that you had to buy timed ticket entry, which was breathtakingly expensive, but the real kicker was the next available slot for four people was two hours away. So that plan was abandoned, and we were tired enough that we didn't really consider reverting to our first plan, and so we decided to head out towards our next destination, but not before grabbing popcorn and a churro (and also, weirdly, a Mexican candy with a listed flavor of "Spicy Tamarind" that Peter bought in a fit of buyer panic...I don't think he ever even tried it).
So we drove southeast to get out of Chicago, on a toll highway that was shockingly devoid of gas stations (which reminds me, I have to figure out if I can pay those tolls online). We took a pitstop with maybe a gallon left of gas in a very sketchy industrial part of Gary Indiana. And then on to LaFayette, IN, which wasn't really our destination, just a place that we would stop overnight at on our way to Ohio. We went to the pool, and then went and got Chipotle next door.
We watched "A Bug's Life" which I realized is the same movie as Seven Samurai, basically, and I didn't sleep great, but that's OK because the next morning we got up and headed towards Dayton, which was going to be mostly my "Disneyland Day". First, though, the kids got to enjoy the glory of hotel free breakfast.
Then three more hours and we were at our destination, the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
We had most of the day to spend here, and it is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) military aviation museums in the world.
It is laid out -roughly- chronologically. Starting with the early Wright Brothers Military Flyer, this being a 1955 reproduction with an original engine donated by Orville Wright.
I'm going to preemptively apologize for the quality of pics for the rest of the post. Sometimes the lighting makes it impossible to get good pics, sometimes things are just out of focus but I only took one pic and I still want to use it, because it is a cool plane and I want to remember it later, even if its fuzzy. Here are a couple WWI fighters.
French SPAD fighter, such as the US Army Air Service used (we were mostly using European fighters at the time, I gather).
One of the first cruise missiles! A semi guided flying bomb known as the Kettering Aerial Torpedo or "Bug".
An early Italian heavy bomber.
Martin MB-2, one of the first American bombers.
An autogyro! Missing link between helicopter and fixed wing planes (although the Osprey and various VTOL craft can claim similar status I suppose).
A reproduction P-26...with quite a paint job, obviously camoflauge wasn't our priority at the time.
Northrop A-17 attack bomber...the USAAC tended to go more for multi-engine attack aircraft (aside from fighters) although this single engine 2-crew design seemed to work for carrier based dive bombers.
Hawker Hurricane.
Arbeit Macht Frei! .... .... .... OK OK no jokes.
Flag flown on the cruiser USS St Louis during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was then flown from the Iowa in Tokyo Bay during the surrender.
Another pre WWII bomber, the B-18 Bolo. Quickly replaced by more capable designs.
The P-40 Warhawk, with the shark teeth that just feels RIGHT with this aircraft.
A worthy adversary, the Zero.
B-25 Mitchell medium bomber.
Fuzzy pic of the P-39 Airacobra, such a weird but cool design...mid engined, like a Porsche...with a massive 37mm autocannon as its primary armament.
Dive bomber with diving flaps down.
For a quick second I thought this was another Mitchell, but no, this is a B-24 Liberator (they have similar noses I suppose, and the tail). But this is obviously the larger, heavier one.
Bristol Beaufighter, a British heavy fighter.
The famed Memphis Belle, a B-17 like my grandfather flew in.
A-36 Apache, an attack version of the P-51 Mustang, with a Spitfire in American livery behind.
Another view of the Belle.
Speaking of worthy opponents, the Messerschmitt Bf.109.
A fuzzy pic of the P-38 Lightning, the plane that caught up to Admiral Yamamoto.
Another medium bomber, the B-26.
The later style of P-51 Mustang (I assume D variant), with the full glass cupola. If you can't see your bandit you're going to end up with him on your six...
Another view of the Spitfire.
Some of the D-Day transports...C-47 and Waco glider.
V-1 buzz bomb. Probably closer to the actual first cruise missile, at least the first one used to significant success.
V-2...first ballistic missile, first object in space. Dubious honors given what it was meant to do, but that is war.
DeHaviland Mosquito, another British heavy fighter.
German medium bomber, Junkers Ju88 I believe.
One of the first guided bombs, the German anti-ship "Fritz X".
A big old P-47 Thunderbolt, with a heavy armament of 8 .50 cal machine guns, and later full glass cupola.
Flakvierling 38, 4 20mm autocannons for anti-aircraft defense.
Not certain, but looks like another Spitfire in US livery.
Focke Wulf Fw.190. Another powerful fighter from the Luftwaffe.
Experimental, but never operational, wire guided air to air missile Germany was developing. Technology went on to get used in anti-tank missiles.
Ah, the Schwalbe. First operational jet fighter, the Me.262. Quad 30mm cannons in the nose, two jet engines, swept back wings. It was fast. Unfortunately it was also German.
Another P-47, this one in razorback configuration.
Another medium attack/bomber, the A-20 Havoc.
PBY Catalina, the eyes of the Navy.
Quite the historical specimen here...B-29 Bockscar, the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki (and effectively stopped the war) (no, tankies, don't argue with me, I'm not interested) (*sigh* oh yes, the Soviets rolling into Manchuria was what made the Japanese come to the table, not the very real threat of each of their cities getting incinerated one after another)
P-61, a really cool looking night-fighter.
The Japanese Ohka rocket-powered kamikaze plane.
Kawanishi George, a capable Japanese fighter.
Then having completed the WWI and WWII hangar, next over to the Korea/Vietnam hangar. It's not completely organized, so many of the Predator/Reaper drones are overhead. Which is not usually a place you want to be, underneath one of these fellas.
Also included is the Air Force's premier 5th gen air superiority fighter, the F-22 Raptor. Above it is the odd experimental "Bird of Prey", a Boeing stealth demonstrator that barely looks like it should be able to fly, but I guess it did.
A massive surveillance drone, the RQ-4 Global Hawk. Below it are the simulators. Pete and I bought tickets, I took the pilot seat and Pete was the Weapons Systems Officer, launching the Fox Twos and selecting the targets. It had full rotation and I flew it fairly aggressively, it was fun. Managed to get to "Skilled" level with our one attempt.
Close up to the Raptor, side "Fox 2" bays open.
It is a slick looking bird.
Over in the Korea section you have these old combatants...I think a F-86 Sabre and its nemesis, the MiG-15.
The F-82 Conjoined Twin Mustang.
F-94 interceptor, which incorporated an early afterburner and an obvious, rather large radar in the nose.
F-84 Thunderjet.
B-45 Tornado, one of our first jet bombers.
Inside a walk-through fuselage of a B-29.
An early guided bomb.
Other side of the hangar was Vietnam centered, with the big B-52 taking up a fair amount of space.
First of the Century fighters, the F-100 Super Sabre.
Not that I meant to go in any order, but the next up in that series, the F-101 Voodoo.
The B-57 Canberra.
A-37 Dragonfly, the famed "WAR CESSNA". I don't know that they called it that but they should have. It makes a Cessna sound so intimidating.
A-26 Invader, built for strafing runs. Still in use up til 1969.
OV-10 Bronco, designed for observation but could be equipped for armed reconnaissance.
Early guided air-to-ground missiles.
A workhorse, during that war and beyond...the F-4 Phantom.
The F-105 Thunderchief.
Couple of MiGs, a MiG-17 and a MiG-21.
A-1 Skyraider, forefather of the A-10...slow, heavy, and packed with ground attack armament.
US small arms.
And small arms of the NVA / VC. On the right is a handmade carbine of sorts.
The big swing-wing F-111 Aardvark.
F-8 Crusader (I think).
F-105 in Wild Weasel format.
The '52's bomb bay.
Sit in cockpits are still fun.
Debra and Gretchen had left earlier to go get food while Pete and I finished the hangar tour. They were still not back so we headed to the front and walked over to the outside exhibit of a few weather-worn planes, including an A-10.
Cargo and tanker there at the end.
We were looking at this F-15 Eagle and saw a bunch of kites...it was actually "Kite Week" at the museum.
It was windy enough for it, for sure.
Met back with the rest of the family on their return...they had gone to a couple places, first a boba tea place (Gretchen really digs boba tea) where G got a bun (not sure the filling) and Debra bought a couple rather odd, I think Korean street food style corn dogs, one with embedded potato chunks in the batter, and she also bought a couple gyros from a Mediterranean place next door. We ate well in the park next door.
Back into the building for hangar 3! Dominated by the massive B-36, with 6 pusher prop engines and 4 jet engines.
F-86D, basically an F-86 Sabre with added radar.
F-94 showing off its rocket pods. These caused problems...blinding the pilots with smoke, and potentially even causing jet intake flameouts from the rocket exhaust.
Obviously just a casing, but seeing nuclear weapons does remind you how dangerous things got during the Cold War.
View of the B-36 pusher piston engines, turbojets out towards the end of the wing.
B-58 Hustler, fast moving strategic bomber.
B-47 Stratojet, kind of an ugly duckling, admittedly.
Continuing with the Century series, F-102 Delta Dagger.
SR-71, needs no introduction.
(Century series) F-104 Starfighter. Known to the West Germans who used her long after we retired the model as a "Widowmaker".
Another F-101 Voodoo...
The not particularly photogenic F-100 Super Sabre, I think this one maybe a retired Thunderbird demonstrator?
I don't remember the make, but man, if you could get a car any more Eastern European than this thing, it would smoke cigarettes and wear jumpsuits.
F-4 Phantom, a veteran of the Gulf War, with camels marked for kills (showcasing our cultural sensitivity as usual).
Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29, these birds are still in service and fighting (both sides of the war in Ukraine).
A rough counterpart, the F-15 Eagle.
The now-retired F-117, the first operational stealth aircraft (mostly a strike aircraft, not really a fighter).
Panavia Tornado, not sure in whose services this one was, maybe Saudi?
AC-130, the thing OTHER than a Reaper drone that you really, really don't want circling overhead.
An A-10 with its 30mm cannon shown, the aircraft was essentially built around this high-powered tank busting autocannon.
More drones...
The B-1B Lancer, known as the Bone, our supersonic strategic bomber.
Gretchen even joined in when and where you could hop into the cockpit...
I've started Pete off with Microsoft Flight Simulator (I realized with some shame...my son doesn't understand the basic flight mechanics you at least get growing up playing flight simulator games! We shall rectify this!).
The B-2 Spirit, America's stealth bomber. Just an unbelievable looking thing, most of them are housed just down the road from us at Whiteman AFB. Not necessarily a great situation were nuclear war to break out, but let's face it, great situations will be in short supply in general when such a thing happens.
Various ballistic missiles in the Missile Hall, like walking through a very dangerous forest...
Mockup of a launch control facility but the second picture is what made me laugh!
Women...At The Launch Button! Join us for the heartwarming tale of Madge, the spunky farm girl from Wisconsin whose peers and teachers said she'd never amount to anything, and who worked hard and clawed her way through the Air Force Academy, getting commissioned and advancing against all odds to a command post for a Minuteman ICBM site, and revel in her success as she proves that she can, just as well as any man, give the command to begin World War Three and bring fiery annihilation and nuclear winter upon us all! You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be vaporized instantly if you're one of the lucky ones!
The sole surviving Valkyrie. An experimental Mach 3 strategic bomber that looks, well, just so dang cool. Never put into service...at some point SLBMs and ICBMs became the more important nuclear deterrent and bombers were less critical (a B-52 you can run a lot more cheaply, and they can deliver nukes on target just the same).
The Apollo 15 module! I'm happy for the upcoming Artemis project, because I'm a bit scared we were going to get to a point where the remaining astronauts who'd been to the Moon die off, and the only thing remaining that has been there are things like this.
Can't tell if that is an A-12 or SR-71, but they are basically in the same family. Valkyrie towering over it.
The X-15, rocket powered and just amazingly fast...Mach 6 if I recall correctly.
The X-3 Stiletto, a goofy looking testbed for supersonic design.
Bell X-1B, a slightly modified version of the X-1 Yeager broke the sound barrier in.
XF-85 Goblin, a parasite fighter concept that, well, didn't make that much sense.
The XF-84H Thunderscreech...a massive turboprop engine designed for speed, it was meant to set propeller speed records but I think its main accomplishment was the amazing, damaging loudness of the aircraft, its propellers actually breaking the sound barrier themselves.
Grumman X-29, with forward swept wings.
The Avrocar, an experimental and ill-fated attempt to basically build a flying saucer.
YF-23, the 5th gen alternative to the F-22 that didn't make it to production.
Better view. It had some interesting lines, for sure.
Then onto the handful of presidential aircraft. They got larger, and nicer, chronologically speaking. Truman's one was relatively spartan.
Cockpit, well, it's about the same.
Spartan interiors but with some nice touches.
Eisenhower's Lockheed.
Departure and destination clocks, probably manually set by the staff, make a nice touch.
Then to the big one, a true Air Force One that served Kennedy (bringing his casket back from Texas even), Johnson (who was sworn in on it), Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
Avionics and comms equipment were definitely upgraded over the years.
It's larger, and assuredly more comfortable.
I think this was an F-111 Aardvark, given the tandem layout.
It was just the cockpit section...apparently an ejection actually ejected the entire cockpit as a pod, vs individual crew.
No I didn't buy it but I thought long about doing so.
Back to the hotel for some pool time...not a great pool, but hey it was warm at least.
I went to go get gas, and dinner...Skyline Chili, which was a regional thing I wanted to try. Not bad at all, a kind of cinnamon spice to the chili that I didn't hate, and what's more odd, Debra didn't (fervently) hate either. Usually if cinnamon even comes near a savoury dish she shoots daggers out of her eyes at me. We watched Andy Griffith, Spongebob, and hit the bed for a decent night of sleep.
I got up early in the morning to get ready to go and I was trying to think of how I could gently wake Debra and the kids up...gradually increasing a tiny bit of light into the room from the bathroom...but they were reluctant to wake up so I just got myself as ready as I could and wondered what to do next without being the asshole. But you know what? Life found a way...the Asshole Required was given to us by providence, in the form of a fire alarm going off at 5am or whatever it was at that moment. That woke them up for sure! We hastily got shoes on and made for the stairwell, and got out. It took 20-30 minutes but they turned it off...no fire, just a faulting system that had apparently done this the day before. But hey it worked for my purposes. We finished getting ready, ate our hotel breakfast quickly so as to not get sent outside by another false alarm, and headed out to take I-70 back to KC.
On the way, we stopped by Balkan Treat Box in St Louis. The place was packed, Debra bemoaning the overly hipstery vibe of the place and clientele (we were expecting more of a hole-in-the-wall strip center place where we usually find great ethnic food), but the food was great, and I can't fault the beardy hipsters for discovering and liking the place.
The Turkish style pide (with ajvar, kajmak, meat, and lots of herbs, including dill which I quite liked) was amazing, Debra and I shared it, and Gretchen got the cevapcici. Pete had some kind of grilled cheese on flatbread. Great food and a worthwhile stop!
And yeah, we got home...with the rest of the week still off of school, so a good compressed Spring break vacation all around.
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