If you hang around here long, you’ll hear me bitch about living in Kansas City. Not because I don’t love it, I spent years 5 to 27 in the metro but until 2020 I lived in Denver and living surrounded by inescapable natural beauty has a way of changing a person. As a girl who grew up still easily charmed by hay bales and power lines, once mountains met me every time I left the grocery store, my perspective got skewed.
While Kyle and I built our family on the mountain-side outskirts of the Denver Metro, we had the luxury of packing up and day-tripping to destinations out-of-staters use vacation time to experience. Rocky Mountain National Park. Horsetooth Reservoir. Dillon, Breck, A-Basin. Estes Park. Boulder. Garden of the Gods. Golden hikes and river rafting Red Rocks. They were a picnic basket away for the years that formed our family.
When I begrudgingly decided to trade my emotional regulation from the mountains for potential familial closeness that never panned out, I crashed hard.
I understand Missouri is a gem, if you have a three hour drive in you to access the mountainous hills and caves of Branson, Table Rock, and beyond. I also understand Arkansas and the Flint Hills offer uniquely beautiful sights for not too long of a drive. Locally, I’ve learned to love what Loose and Swope parks offer but spontaneous high-dopamine day trips have been lacking since we moved back and I’d all but given up finding them until last weekend.
Last weekend my family cosplayed as Lawrencians for a day.
A town I followed ex-boyfriends to for shows at The Bottleneck in the mid 2000’s (several of which Kyle also attended although our paths never managed to cross), home of my favorite vintage thrift shops and some of the best house parties I’ve ever attended, I have nothing but fond memories in Lawrence. So, it was high time we showed the boys the hype.
I briefly mentioned to Kyle last Friday that I read that the human brain benefits from spontaneous day trips more than intricately planned vacations. We get all charged up with neuroplasticity when upsetting regular routines in a way that doesn’t involve the mental load of packing and planning or air travel and all the other nonsense. We just need to go for it to be a benefit to our mental health.
As a post-partum mom for the third time struggling with yearly dopamine and vitamin D drop of autumn, I mentioned how I’d love to go on a shop-cat tour of Massachusetts St in Lawrence or sing karaoke in Weston.
Kyle being who he is, woke me up the next morning saying, “I was thinking we go to Lawrence today.” Like magic, the next 45 minutes turned into the same rush-around picnic prep we used to assume our roles for when heading to the mountains for the day and truly, it worked. I tricked my brain in all the same ways.
Kyle drove us first to Clinton Lake park, where we set out to “hike.” And please accept my apology, but as a former Coloradan, the use of this term is nearly unacceptable anywhere in or slightly outside the metro, but my out-of-shape heart rate felt like I was climbing mountains again.
We took a loop trail on the lake shore stopping every once in a while for our Waldorf-schooled sons to connect with the earth and catch their breath. They collected feathers, rocks, walking sticks, and “wands.” We walked through a too-crowded conifer forest that resembled Snow White escaping the huntsman as we told stories and jokes along the way.
But realizing how out of shape we are, it got real quiet for the second half. In relative silence on the return path, with surprisingly only one or two “how close are we to the car?” questions, we locked in as a family like old times. I wore our infant in a carrier and let him stop several times to reach for twigs and bark, taking me back to all the times our older two did the same in our mountain adventures.
Then, as if the last exhausted leg of the walk didn’t exist, we reached the parking lot and playground where the boys were mysteriously gifted fresh legs and played for another hour and a half, making friends and playing “6, 7 tag.” Which is just regular tag but yelling “6, 7” when you tag someone, naturally.
After enjoying the transition from hiking to the playground, we were finally able to rally them and our infant for my dream of shop-kitty hunting on Mass. We drove to Mass St, lucking out on a parking spot directly in front of my favorite place in Lawrence for 20 plus years, Freestate Brewery, where we wanted to end our walk and have dinner.
We unloaded the troops and it was a dream. Fall leaves covering the sidewalk, sun on one side of the street, shade on the other. Everything I remember and more is still preserved. Sure, there’s still an ever-rotating collection of storefronts in Massachusetts but the important digs have survived the test of time.
We dipped into every shop we could with a cat possibly on their employee list, starting with Raven Bookstore. Banks fell in love with a book about octopus and Huxley wanted to buy a Very Hungry Caterpillar onesie for his baby brother. We hit Gamenut Entertainment with all the comics and Pokémon cards my boys could dream of, every vintage and antique shop we could find, and remarked on how many establishments still exist from the 2000’s and 2010’s when we were last active in this town.
Bringing our boys to such a memory-heavy location for the first time was a gift I didn’t expect.
After two leg-heavy activities, we finally tired out and found ourselves at Freestate Brewery. After being taken up to a perfectly chill and quiet room that fit our whole crew, with my favorite stout of all time in my hand (their oatmeal stout), my eldest son said, “Mom, it feels like we’re in Omaha but didn’t have to pack or drive there.”
I immediately looked at Kyle and smiled. Proof that if you feel stagnant or seasonally trapped, you might just need a day trip. Loading up the car with snacks and sandwiches and driving somewhere that wakes your brain up when you’re feeling stuck is a balm we all need quick access to as the colder months settle in.
And come to find out, Lawrence is here to share your burden.
Continue the cat tour of Mass Street
Dave at Wonder Fair or Fleet Feet
Chardonnay at Love Garden Sounds
Dean and Sammie at Raven Book Store
And a very devastating recent RIP to Dinah, long-time employee of the Dusty Bookshelf