Arrowhead Stadium or Bust! The Ultimate Father-Son Getaway

The date was June 5, 2015. Just two days earlier, my son Jace returned home from serving an honorable and successful mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Western Australia. We gathered in our living room as family and friends to celebrate his 21st birthday which was just six days earlier.

I'd known for quite some time exactly what present I wanted to give him.

You see, Jace has been a Kansas City Chiefs fan his entire life yet he had never seen a game in person. I had attended multiple games at Arrowhead Stadium during my sportscaster days back in Kansas.

To be honest, there is no place quite like Arrowhead. It's been known as the rocking-est, loudest stadium in the National Football League for several decades. In fact, I remember spending one particular game on the sidelines at Arrowhead. By the time it was over I was just exhausted. It wasn't so much from carrying a camera on my shoulder for three hours as it was to have sound waves from the roar of the fans pounding my body play after play all game long. All in all, it's just a glorious place to take in a game.

Turkey Bowl reunion with my buddy John

When in Kansas, gotta get a Sonic slush

I flew out to my folks' place in Wichita the day before Thanksgiving. Jace had worked the previous three months in Texas so he met me there. We had a great visit with my family. In addition to my parents, Kerry's family was there as was Amy's as well as Lacey, Matthew and Paul. We played games, shot baskets next door at the church, ate well and laughed a lot! Jace and I even played a little Turkey Bowl football in the rain with my old buddy John Bazzelle on Thanksgiving morning. It had been way too long since I'd been back home and it was awesome to be back.

Hanging with the fam

Cute little Paul

The "kids" table

The "grown up" table

Playing H-O-R-S-E with Kerry & Jace in the old church gym

Like son...

...like father

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Jace and I drove the Cav north toward Kerry's place in Overland Park. On the way there, we were attracted to a massive Scheel's Sporting Goods store. It was so big that it had a ferris wheel inside of it. We also found a couple of other attractions that allowed both Jace and I to throw down nearly identical reverse slam dunks right in front of the University of Kansas student section at Allen Fieldhouse. To cap off our visit, we found some pretty sweet $20 KU and Wichita State hoodies.

Yeah, it's a BIG store

After an enjoyable evening with the Kerrys, we awoke to a rainy day with temperatures in the mid-30s. We stopped at Walmart to get some plastic ponchos and then headed toward the Harry Truman Sports Complex. After finding our parking spot, we walked over to Kauffman Stadium--home of the world champion Kansas City Royals. I was decked out in my Royals gear so we took a few photos before making our way to Arrowhead Stadium.

Champs baby!

We arrived well before game-time because that's exactly what Jace wanted to do. We watched both the Chiefs and Buffalo Bills take the field for pre-game warm-ups. We even saw Bills' kicker Dan Carpenter, who had a highly successful college career at the University of Montana. We had seen him play there before he advanced on to the NFL. We went down to the front row and were only 20 yards or so from him. We yelled for him but he did not acknowledge us until we shouted "Go Griz!" Even then, he only nodded.

Here come the Chiefs

Soaked, but lovin' it

Not quite the 50-yard line but pretty darn close

Our seats were perfect: section 101, row 26, seats 1 and 2 on the 42-yard line. The rain continued to fall at a steady pace. Because of that, some fans stayed away but Arrowhead was still rocking. Like all the other fans, we also stayed on our feet the entire three-and-a-half hour game. There was really no reason to sit down. The rain was constant and our seats were drenched. Our short-sleeved ponchos kept the rain off our bodies but our arms and gloves were soaked. We didn't care though. We screamed every play the Chiefs were on defense. It was our contribution helping the team..

This was a big, big game with huge playoff implications for both Kansas City and Buffalo, and boy did the Chiefs deliver. Kansas City fell behind 10-0 before ratcheting up the defense and then outscoring the Bills 30-12 over the last three quarters to take a 30-22 victory.

Post-game & soaking in the victory

The next morning we started the Kansas City-to-Montana drive home in the Cav. Our goal was to make it to eastern Montana in one really, really long day so our second day would be much easier. The only thing is Mother Nature did not cooperate. Temperatures dropped and the steady rain turned to snow. We had no choice but to go as far as we could because I had to catch a plane to Las Vegas in 48 hours for work.

The Cav's silouette

The farther we went, the more intense the snow became. We found ourselves forced to reduce our speed from 75 miles an hour to 60 to 50 to 45. At times, we followed the snow plows. At other times, we passed the plows and kept on going. Little did we know that we were in a blizzard warning as we cut across Iowa into South Dakota. We later learned that Sioux Falls, Mitchell and other towns along the way set single-day records for snowfall.

After awhile, it became abundantly clear that if we didn't pull over, we may spend the evening stuck in the Cav in a snow drift. We called ahead and reserved a room in Kadoka (where?) in west-central South Dakota, some 400 miles shy of Billings.

We set our alarms early the next morning. It took us about 25 minutes just to cover the 80 yards from the parking lot to the road. Things didn't get much better from there. We gassed up and the "little car that could" worked as its own snow plow as we struggled down the on-ramp onto I-90. The interstate was no better. In fact. it was much, much worse than the previous night. Somehow we made it one mile in the deep snow to the next exit. We got off the interstate, somehow made it off the off-ramp and returned to our motel. We had left our key in the room since we didn't think we'd return so we were locked out. Jace contacted the manager who supplied us another key and we climbed back into bed and went back to sleep.

We awoke some 3-4 hours later only to find the snowplows had been out and done their job. Snow was no longer falling and it wasn't an hour or two until we were again traveling 75 miles an hour. There was no snow on the road as we cut across the corner of Wyoming into Montana. From there, we later stopped in Bozeman before making it across the rest of the state and arriving home at about
11 p.m.

Cav = the little car that did

All in all, it was a victorious father-son trip to always remember.

To me, this photo says it all!