Leslie and David's Wanderings: 6 September 2020 Exploring KC and Arabia

While looking for interesting things to do in Kansas City Missouri, Leslie found out there was a Chuy’s Mexican Food Restaurant in the south part of Downtown. It has been a long time since we were able to indulge our Mexican Food Sunday’s cravings.

So right after watching Church on YouTube, we headed for downtown. The area around where Chuy’s was located is an area in transition, and we did not like some of the graffiti that was on the walls of some of the abandoned builds, but we took a chance to enjoy some of the first really good Mexican food we have had for months!. Of course we had to have margaritas to go with our green chili enchiladas! After indulging ourselves, we decided to check out the Steamboat Arabia Museum ($18 per person admission) on the north side. We had considered going to the National WW1 museum, but it was only going to be open for another 2 hours and we did not think we could see that much of it in that short a period. The Steamboat Arabia was a good choice. The Steamboat Arabia sank on the Missouri River in September 1856 when it hit an underwater log snag. The snag plowed into the hull of the boat like a torpedo (The log was later recovered still embedded in the hull) and the boat sank in minutes with 200 tons of its cargo. Everyone aboard was able to make it safely to shore except one poor mule that went down with the boat. The river and mud quickly swallowed the wreck and nothing was salvaged. 132 years later, a group of Kansas City treasure seekers (A Father, two sons and two local businessmen) identified the place where the Arabia had sunk. Now ½ mile away from the current river channel and buried 45 feet deep under a farm field. Using their own funds, and doing most of their own labor, they dug down to the wreck during the winter of 1987/88 and recovered tons of goods that had been in the ship’s hold along with the boilers and portions of the ship’s hull. They had planned to sell what they found, but when they discovered the extent of the find, they decided instead to preserve the find as a collection and create a museum. Thousands of items from shoes (4000 pairs of shoes and boots), dishes (from England), silverware (from Spain), tin goods, iron pots/pans, hundreds of tools, barrels of nails and screws, medical items, food items (many still edible) and clothing. They have completed restoration of only 2/3rds of the items recovered so far with restoration still ongoing. It was like walking into a 1856 Walmart of home goods. We even got to meet one of the original five explorers who came by to ask if we had any questions. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit.