Riverfront Heritage Trail Kansas City, MO/KS

Day 2 of R and R weekend:

We checked out the Riverfront Heritage Trail of Kansas City MO/KS

She's the one who picked this trail and she decided she would like our ride to start at the Town of Kansas Bridge, for no other reason than she liked the quirky name of "Town of Kansas." This is not a trailhead and there is not a parking lot for public use at this spot, but there was unmetered on-street parking so we had no trouble finding a place to park. 

There's our little meep-meep car and there's the cool warehouse/loft building that we parked beside.

And a little outside living area for the tenants.....

As is fitting for a trail with the word "Heritage" in its name, 

there are dozens of informational signs all along the trail. 

The Town of Kansas bridge

Getting his history fix......

Overlooking the Missouri River......

 Once you get to this point on the bridge, the actual trail is 3 stories below 

and you have two choices of how to get down there:  

Carry your bike down three flights of stairs....... or take the elevator. 

Yes, that is an elevator door that he is standing in front of.

And here it is from the bottom.  

It was sketchy and questionable, but it got us up and down without incident. 

Once at river level, there were plaques marking 

the high water lines from 3 major floods.

Interesting that they were all in July.  But maybe that's major flood season.

Really, what do I know? 

And we began our bike ride on the trail

Almost immediately, we encountered this interesting thing.

We theorize it was likely either a platform that a crane sat on to load barges with

....... or the mothership landing pad. 

Some cool bicycle art

The downtown KC skyline from Berkley Riverfront Park 

(which has a parking lot for trail access)

It was brisk and more than a little breezy out there that morning. 

There's my sweetie, mimicking a bridge. 

Look at those counterweights on that railroad bridge.  

Human ingenuity and engineering is amazing. 

This ended this leg of the trail for us. This trail is a mixture of off-street bike path and on-street riding.  We are not on-street riders, so we loaded our bikes back up in the car and followed the well-marked bike route signs until we found where it once again turned into some off-street path, which ended up being on the Kansas side where the trail crosses over the Kansas River. Again, we parked on-street, this time near the Strawberry Hill Museum, and picked up the path from there. 

See that bridge behind him?  

This guy has a story about that bridge from three decades ago or so.

I'm just glad he's here today to tell me about it.

This leg of the trail pretty much lives in the shadow of I-70 traveling over your head. 

 

At least the graffiti artist apparently love bikes (and chickens) :)

We ran out of off-street path at this point on this leg of the trail. 

According to this sign, it is a trailhead, too. 

It had a pretty little garden

with a sign explaining the significance of the art.

And a caboose....

 ... with a sign explaining the history of the railroad in KC

View of church on Strawberry Hill from the trail bridge over the Kansas River.

The bridge had tons of neat art

But make no mistake.  This entire trail is urban, old big city downtown urban, and gritty -- very gritty. I never, NEVER would have felt comfortable riding this trail alone. All told, with the two separate legs that we rode, it was only right at 8 miles. 

After our ride, we had a late mid-afternoon lunch at Mi Ranchito.

His: Some sort of chimichanga thing

Hers:  A veggie burrito covered in chipotle cheese.

And folks, I kid you not.  This was absolutely one of the best things I have ever tasted. The vegetables were grilled and smoky tasting and it was positively amazing.