Burnt Ends and Sunblock

Today involved a lot of Burnt Ends and a lot of Sunblock. I'm staying here at Ft. Leavenworth with my brother John, his wife Eun Young, and their three daughters Donna, Anna, and Jenna. They just moved here a month ago from Korea where my brother and his family have been for the last 9 years, so it's great to get to spend an extended period of time of my trip here and visit.

Ft. Leavenworth is a really scenic base and the remodeling they've done to the base housing are going a long way to improving the appeal to living on base if you're military. They've relocated the USDB (United States Disciplinary Barracks) to a more remote part of the base and turned the old one into office type buildings and in particular it now houses some of the Family, Morale, Welfare, and Recreation offices. Kind of a strange use for an old jail, but I guess it works. There's also a really nice memorial to the Buffalo Soldiers since this is where they got their start shortly after the civil war.

Today we all went out to a water park on the Missouri side of Kansas City for most of the day and I had a great time hanging out with the nieces and relaxing myself. I looked at Chip funny when he told me a couple weeks ago that I should think about bringing a bathing suit. I think all that ran through my mind was how am I going to make time to go swimming with all the BBQ I need to eat, but he was right and I digress. We then made our way over to Arthur Bryant's Barbecue that has history that dates back to when BBQ began in Kansas City with Henry Perry and Arthur's brother Charlie. Kansas City is another town that claims to have the worlds best BBQ and given it's popularity for BBQ contests it makes a good argument. We picked up some BBQ to go on the way home from the water park and lasted about the time it took to go from the drive thru window (we went to one of the expansion restaurants hence the drive thru) to the light at the intersection before we were into the burnt ends. Burnt ends come from the ends of beef brisket that are cooked for a bit longer and are a bit crunchier and then go swimming in a bath of Kansas City style BBQ sauce to loosen them up a bit. KC style is a slightly spicy tomato base like a good Texas sauce, but quite a bit thicker and also has a sweet molasses or honey taste to it. We also got dry pork ribs which were pretty tasty and could have compared well with the ones I got in Memphis at Neely's but I still think the ribs I had at Neely's were just excellent. Then there was the sausage and the BBQ beans, which were both good but different still then all the other places I've been so far. The sausage looked like a cross between thinly sliced spam and salami and the beans were swimming in a thinned down version of the house BBQ sauce with some brisket thrown in there to kick it up a notch. All in all it was very excellent BBQ and I'm pretty sure my brother's family just found a new spot for dinner.