I went to the City Market this morning expecting to meet about 12 to 15 people for my first-ever KC TourWalk. Imagine my surprise to instead find a crowd of 22! (23 once you add in me.)

We began with a winding 6-mile walk from the City Market to the Country Club Plaza, and everyone in the group did a fantastic job of holding up a good pace so the group never stretched out longer than a block. We took breaks at Union Station, Liberty Memorial, and at the Westport Sunfresh before taking a final break at the Plaza. Among the sights we saw: River Market, Garment District, Case Park, Quality Hill, Convention District, Crossroads, Union Station, Liberty Memorial, Penn Valley, Valentine, Westport, St. Luke's, the Plaza, and Brush Creek.

At the Plaza half of the group elected for the one-way version and either went on their own way or took the MAX back to the City Market. The other half of the group took a faster-paced 7-mile walk back to the City Market, with rest stops at Kauffman Memorial Gardens and at Hyde Park. Among the sights we saw: Kauffman Gardens, Nelson Art Gallery, Gilham Park, Hyde Park, Union Hill, Hospital Hill, Children's Mercy Park, the Crossroads, and the Sprint Center and Power & Light District construction sites.

Since this went over so well, I'm planning another one on a different (likely shorter) route in about 6 to 8 weeks.

Here's a few more pictures...

Garment District...



Case Park...



Quality Hill...



Heading into Union Station...



Approaching Liberty Memorial...



The Valentine neighborhood...



Kauffman Memorial Gardens...



Kauffman Memorial Gardens...



Kauffman Memorial Gardens...



Hyde Park...



Hyde Park...



Here's an overview of the route we walked. Blue is the one-way half-course walked by 23 people, red is the return course walked by 11 members of the group. The orange dots represent a construction detour we followed, so we did not walk through the West Side today as originally planned.