Photo/Travel Blog: NFL Week 12 (Denver at Kansas City)

Photo/Travel Blog: NFL Week 12 (Denver at Kansas City)

Andy Lopusnak, AndysPictures.com

November 24-25, 2012

For just the fourth time in my now 200+ NFL games with CBS Sports, I’ll be doing a Kansas City Chiefs home game. KC is the least visited home AFC team that I’ve covered (Tennessee, 4; Jacksonville, 5 are the next closest). I haven’t been to Arrowhead Stadium since Week 16 of 2008 when the Miami Dolphins beat the Chiefs 38-31. That was by far the coldest game I’ve ever attended. It was just three degrees outside (with a wind chill below zero). I’ve been to KC other times for college basketball and Arena Football games

The view of the KC skyline from the National World War I Museum is spectacular with Union Station in the foreground and the colorful skyline in the background. Cloud cover was awesome that just accented the great view.

At the WWI Museum is Liberty Memorial Tower, a 217-foot structure that was completed in 1926. It has four carved Guardian Spirits around the tower: Honor, Courage, Patriotism and Sacrifice. There are also two sphinxes with covered eyes sandwiching the tower: Memory and Future.

I’ve been to the top of the tower in the past but never in the museum, so I decided to do both this time. Admission to the WWI Museum and the tower was $14 (it’s $5 just for the tower alone, so an extra $9 to learn more about the forgotten war was pretty good).

INSIDE THE WWI MUSEUM

Outside of the WWI Museum is awesome. Inside is not a amazing, but is filled with lot of information of the not-so-famous World War. The first thing you see when you walk inside is 9,000 red poppies (each representing 1,000 deaths). These poppies grew fast, sometimes over night, in the trenches due to the constant bombings that stirred up the ground and exposed the poppy seeds to light. 

The museum consists of 32,000-square feet with two theaters and numerous artifacts including: a Renualt FT-17 tank, replica trenches, uniforms form all sides of the conflict, propaganda photos and other WWI related items.

BRONCOS 17, CHIEFS 9

Kansas City took a 6-0 lead into the second quarter and recaptured the lead in the third quarter at 9-7, but Denver QB Peyton Manning’s second passing touchdown was too much to overcome for the league’s worst team (1-10). 

Manning surpassed the 3,000-yard mark during the game giving him 14 straight seasons (aside from 2011 when he missed the entire year) with more than 3K. The two TD scores also put him at 26 for the year and in all of those 14 seasons he’s had at least 26 scores. After the game, Manning walked by the TV trucks next to me and proceed to sign autographs for a long period of time with the fans. Very classy. 

ARROWHEAD STADIUM TIME LAPSE: CORNER VIEW

I put my Canon 40D next to the CBS “beauty camera” in the southeast corner. It tallied 775 total images with an interval of every 25 seconds.

ARROWHEAD STADIUM TIME LAPSE: HIGH SIDELINE

The GoPro Hero 2 was set up high at the 50-yard line. A total of 638 photos were taken over the course of five hours and 19 minutes at an interval of every 30 seconds. When I got up there, the camera was still going strong. I really think the double battery is getting more power since I drain it every week.

SEVEN TO GO

With the addition of two time lapses of Arrowhead Stadium, I’ve shot time lapses in 25 of the 32 NFL home venues (as well as Wembley Stadium in London). The elusive seven remaining include: Carolina, Cleveland, Jacksonville, New England, San Diego, Tampa Bay and Tennessee. There’s five weeks left in the regular season and I’ve been assigned the next three (NE@MIA, MIA@SF and DEN@BAL). However, I’ve nabbed time lapses at those three venues. In the final two weeks there are four possible new venues (Week 16: OAK@CAR and NE@JAX; Week 17: MIA@NE and JAX@TEN). I predicted in the preseason that my crew would be in Jacksonville then New England to end the season. Thus far I’ve correctly predicted ten of the 15 games I’d cover this season. Fingers crossed for those two, but would be happy to get at least one.

UP NEXT

To open December, I will be covering CBS Sports’ 2012-13 Men’s College Basketball debut with the Baylor-Kentucky game on Saturday then head to Miami for Patriots-Dolphins. This is the third NCAA basketball debut for CBS that I’ve covered in the past four seasons (all three have been in Lexington).

BEST OF THE BLOG

Here’s a collection of my best shots from this past weekend.