It wouldn’t be a trip to the Midwest without a stop over at Cabela’s. I had no idea what this place was about, I only knew that they had a large selection of wool socks. Josh and I are avid Smartwool fans, in fact if you haven’t been enlightened by these amazing socks go out and buy a pair. They’re expensive but well worth every penny. Anyway, the idea of being able to buy Smartwools at a decent price (or even knock offs for that matter), was extremely appealing. We drove to the outskirts of Kansas City, KS (not the Missouri side, mind you), and were faced with this gigantic store. The first thing that greeted us was several stuffed deer posed on top of a fake hill, looking out over the racks of hunting clothing as if to say, “Come on in! We’re only a mere sample of what you could hunt, kill, and stuff…” The walls were covered with mounted animal heads and in the center of the store was a gigantic faux mountain side covered with tons of taxidermied animals in various ‘nature poses.’ Everything from jack rabbits posed mid-jump to foxes strolling around the hillside next to stuffed squirrels. I’ve never been in the presence of more dead animals mounted to look real. My first thought was: Wow, my sister would totally hate this. (Gina once stood outside in the rain instead of going into a second hand store with my college friends because they had a gigantic bear head hung on the wall and old fur coats in the store window). OK, so I was vaguely intrigued, after all, how else would I be able to look at a wolf so closely? Sure, he was a stuffed remnant of what he once was, but it oddly felt like I was visiting a huge still-life zoo. Surrounding the fake mountain was a pond with real live fish and a few ducks swimming about. I couldn’t tell if this was a great, easy-going, life for the ducks living inside a big store, or whether it was just as inhumane as killing animals and mounting them on display. I bypassed the large stuffed African exhibit where they had zebras and lions mounted to look like they were right in the middle of a big National Geographic moment: two zebras getting attacked from behind by two lions. It was gruesome. And don’t even get me started about the gigantic elephant, (how the HELL did that get there? Aren’t elephants endangered? Isn’t it illegal to poach and stuff them? Maybe it was just really old…)
To avoid getting stared down by glass eyes mounted inside taxidermied elk, I sought refuge in the shoe department. It was there that I found a huge bin of slightly irregular wool socks! Hurray! Josh and I enthusiastically dug around and found several pairs in our sizes. I also tried on some crazy cowboys boots, including this stunning purple pair by Fatbaby: (Come on, how awesome are these? If you’re going to do it, go all the way!)
I marveled at how terrible the fashion was inside this store, even the sometimes decent Columbia sportswear looked dowdy. I was really tempted to buy a camo print bra, just in case I ever need to hide in the bushes half naked, but I resisted. The whole experience was like an anthropological study of a culture I’ve just never related to. Now, I’m not going to take the easy way out and say (with broad sweeping gestures), “Hunting SUCKS, down with hunting!” When we lived in Colorado I actually met a few (very few) easy going guys who hunted–specifically elk–and felt it was very important to use the entire animal. Most of the meat was stored away in a giant freezer so they could nibble on it year round. We had long conversations about the benefits of hunting, most of it I’ve forgotten, but I appreciated being able to have a frank dialogue with someone I normally would judge. Obviously Cabelas is not meant for a peace flag waving, organic food eating, liberal like me, and that’s fine. However, I have to be honest, the store was a little disturbing. Beside the stuffed animals they had an enormous aquarium filled with gigantic, tremendously obese fish that floated aimlessly around in tight quarters. It was like, “Oh, there’s a catfish…times ten.” Seriously, these fish were huge.
We did find some really nice thermal shirts to wear under our snowboard clothes…both were on sale. Josh flirted with the idea of buying this enormous puffy coat:

I kept asking him, “Is it really worth the deal? Would you WEAR it?” Needless to say, we went home without a puffy coat stuffed into our suitcase. Seriously, he looked like the Michelin man: