After Christmas in Lincoln

Started: 2026-01-31 15:46:11

Submitted: 2026-01-31 20:52:28

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Wrapping up Christmas in Lincoln and heading to Kansas City for phase two

On Saturday after Christmas we met our friends Yanthor and Anya for breakfast at The Chocolate Season, a chocolate shop that serves waffles for breakfast on the weekends. It was good to catch up with them. It's been a decade since we lived near enough to nip out for an extended weekend trip; but now that Willy lives in town it gives us another reason to visit Lincoln and see them.

In the evening we made apple strudel, following my mother's recipe (handed down from her own mother and grandmother). The last time we made apple strudel was two years ago at Christmas in Walla Walla, with a different set of people.

On Sunday we drove from Lincoln to Kansas City; my sister Bethany just had a baby and didn't want to travel but we figured it was close enough to drive to Kansas City for Christmas part two. This was the day the weather turned, with a winter storm descending upon the region. In Lincoln it was cold and windy with snow flurries; the snow dusted the streets giving a hint of winter. The forecast implied that Lincoln would get snow until just after noon then subside, so I wasn't anxious about leaving. The drive to Kansas City was supposed to be about three hours so I figured we could leave in early afternoon and there with plenty of time for supper.

Snow-dusted street in Lincoln

We left as I planned in early afternoon, while the snow was still flurrying and the wind was beginning to pick up. Even though I grew up and learned to drive in Boulder, I haven't spent a lot of time driving in snow recently (or with this particular rental car) so I drove carefully out of Lincoln and onto state highway two heading east of the city, through gently-rolling hills covered with fields left fallow for the winter. I could feel the wind as we drove, but there wasn't much snow for it to blow around.

Our route crossed the Missouri river into Iowa, where we joined I-29 and followed it south for a few miles into Missouri. Soon after crossing the state line the conditions changed: the wind was now blowing snow across the highway, obstructing visibility to the point where I felt like I needed to slow down because I couldn't see far enough ahead of me. Not all of the traffic on the road agreed; some sped by in the left lane (or tailgated me in the right lane) even though visibility was poor. The weirdest part was that some traffic was driving with their hazard blinkers on and their headlights off, apparently in an attempt to make themselves more visible to other vehicles on the road. Neither Kiesa nor I had seen quite as many cars drive like this, so she looked it up while I drove, and learned that it's perfectly legal to do that in Missouri but explicitly illegal in neighboring Kansas. (In states where we've held drivers licenses, including California, it's discouraged to drive with hazard blinkers on outside of truly exceptional circumstances.)

While we were still an hour away from Kansas City traffic slowed to a crawl until we passed what looked like a single-car collision involving a pickup truck on a bridge; it looked like the pickup had encountered ice on the bridge and spun out.

After the collision the road conditions stabilized and we drove the rest of the way to Kansas City without further incident.

Bethany lives in an apartment building in downtown Kansas City, so we stayed nearby in the refurbished historic Hotel Kansas City. It was no longer snowing when we arrived, and the buildings downtown shielded us from whatever wind might have been blowing across the plains, but it was still quite cold. The hotel had thick curtains hanging across the door to try to retain heat in the hotel lobby. We got cozy adjoining rooms on the seventh floor so the kids could get their own beds. This worked well enough, but it appeared that the connecting doors would latch when closed and could only be opened from inside each room, so we ended up propping the doors open with a small suitcase.

Hotel Kansas City

We headed out into the cold to visit Bethany and her new baby Logan in their fancy new apartment building a few blocks away. I remembered how to dress for the cold and brought a hat and gloves (but I think I decided it wasn't quite cold or windy enough that I needed a scarf). The kids were less interested in dressing for the cold, and it wasn't clear how cold they really were. (Julian looked miserable out on the street, but maybe that's just his resting face.) We met Bethany in her lobby and went up to her ninth-floor apartment, overlooking a chunk of downtown Kansas City and serving as a landing point after she moved from New York City earlier in the year. We met her new baby Logan, my third nibbling to date, who was just two weeks old (and he was smaller than my kids were when they were born; but my kids were big babies and Logan is a normal-sized baby).

Kiesa rummaged around Bethany's kitchen to make supper, as part of the arrangement to help out a parent with a new baby. Logan remained chill for the evening. After eating we hung out for a bit then headed back to our hotel for the night.