Steamboat Arabia/City Market/Hallmark/K C Racetrack (Monday)

We had a busy day today!  And an excellent one.  Ray and Linda had a vet appointment first thing so we didn't get an early start, but we sure had a full day.  Our first stop was the Steamboat Arabia Museum, an absolutely fascinating place!   How fun this whole project must have been, and it is ongoing because there is still nearly a third of the cargo to finish cleaning, preserving, and then exhibiting.  This steamboat used 32 cords of wood every 24 hours to keep the boilers going, so they often used chopped down trees along the river bank to restock their wood supply.  Logs and stumps often ended up in the river as the soil eroded.  The Missouri River in those days was very treacherous because of that.  They call this river the "Might Mo," too thick to drink, too thin to plow.

"In the year 1856, the steamboat Arabia served as a lifeline to the frontier, bringing tons of new supplies westward to settlements along the Missouri River.  The 171-foot long steamboat, with her twin stacks belching clouds of smoke and ash, pulled away from port en route to towns on the western frontier.  On her deck and nestled in the cargo hold below lay over 200 tons of brand new merchandise:  European dishware, jewelry, guns, tools, food products, and clothing items, shoes and boots were included among her cargo.  The big side-wheeler had just left Kansas City when her hull was suddenly pierced by a submerged tree, which acted like a torpedo.  She sank in about 5 minutes with all of her treasures lost."

All the crew and passengers, however, survived because they were able to reach the top deck of the boat which stayed above water.  The only casualty was a mule.

"Years after the tragic accident, the river changed course, and the legendary Arabia and its hoard of buried treasure was discovered beneath a Kansas farm field.  Buried for 132 years, this steamboat, her evacuation in 1988 uncovered a "time capsule" of remarkably preserved 1856 frontier supplies -- the world's largest collection."

"Lying 45 feet underground, one-half mile from the river's edge, the legendary Arabia had at last been found.  Men and machines soon returned to the spot and unearthed what would become the discovery of a lifetime."
We took tons of pictures here but I will try to limit this to just a few.  The cargo they have found has been cleaned, preserved, and is wonderfully displayed.  Most of the artifacts were in excellent condition because they were still in the shipping crates.

Of particular interest was an exhibit of "bed keys."  We asked what they were for and learned that they actually were used to tighten the rope beds on the boat.  That's where the saying, "good night, sleep tight," came from.

There was a really nice book in the Gift Shop that told the story of this discovery, and had some pictures of the cargo on display.  But they have added so many more exhibits of cargo since the book was published in 1995 that I decided not to buy it.  Instead, I told the cashier (who happened to be the wife/mother of the some of the treasure hunters) that they needed to publish a new book, to which she said, "that is a great idea."

There was a short video about the history of this discovery, and at the end of the film one of the original team talked to us (he was the husband of the cashier, a truly family operation.  Our tour guide was a distant cousin.)

We finally left here, grabbed lunch at a diner just across the street, then walked over to the City Market.  Since this was Monday, there were few vendors there today, but we did go into a spice shop, and bought some fresh fruit and vegetables from the few vendors there.

Next, we headed to the Hallmark Visitors Center.  We thought they actually did factory tours but it was more like a museum, with displays of lots of cards, Christmas ornaments,Keepsake ornaments, Christmas trees, and a listing of the Hallmark movies.  There was a press, and we were told they usually did demonstrations but the operator had a job to do "down the street" today.  It was a nice place, and they gave us some gifts, including a thank you card for both of our veterans, and a little bow we made ourselves at the bow machine.

I even shook hands with our wise friend, Maxine.

We had a hard time finding this place (it's in the Crown Center area), more difficulty finding the right building, and even more difficulty finding our car when we were done.  That became the "excellent adventure" of the day.  Joe finally had to resort to hitting the panic button because we weren't on the right floor of the parking garage.  Who knew that button would work through the concrete floor!  It took us three hits on the panic button, but finally we found the Explorer.

We were headed to the Harley Davidson factory but saw in their brochure that the free tours ended at 1:30 (it's 3:30 by now), so we will try to do that tomorrow.  Instead we headed to the Kansas City Speedway, which was also closed.  But we did talk to the gate attendant, and she advised us to drive next door to the top level of the parking garage at the Hollywood Casino for a better look.  So that's what we did.

Our pilot and co-pilot--and we needed both of them today.
.
And we didn't even lose our car here!

There was a baseball stadium next door, which Ray thought was where the KC Royals play.  Cabellos was also right here.

Linda suggested we stop for pie on the way home at a little restaurant they like, but when we got there we decided to have a light dinner instead, and bought a whole pie to take home with us.

We saw today that the sun actually does shine here in the sunshine state of Kansas, although the news said they had only had 5 completely sunny days during the last 36 days.  It was cloudy all morning, but we were really happy to have the sunshine at our beautiful campsite.

A perfect ending to a perfect day -- we had our pie on the picnic table, then played cards with our new friends.  We had a lot of laughs today.  But the guys beat us soundly, so tomorrow night it's Game On for me and Linda.

And we got to watch a stunning sunset over Smithville Lake.

National WWI Memorial (Sunday)

We woke up to another misty, cloudy day here on the Missouri/Kansas line.  We have a list of things to see here but many of them are closed on Sunday so we opted for the National World War I Museum.  Ray and Linda joined us on this tour.  This is a beautiful museum, with three floors of exhibits.  I spoke with one of the volunteers and he said they change out the exhibits on the 3rd floor every 3 months because they have so many.  I asked him why Kansas City had this memorial and he told me that this city had suffered more losses in this war than any other city of its size (it was a very small town at the time).  He added that a lot of cities had built memorials after the war but most of them not survived the depression, and so their exhibits were sent here.  Then, when it was declared a "national" memorial, more exhibits poured in, so their have an extensive collection.  He told me that only 9% of their collection was on display at any one time, and that is why they change them out every three months. 

First you cross a glass bridge that spans a field of 9,000 poppies (artificial), each representing 1,000 combatant deaths during WWI.  The most famous poem to emerge from WWI was "In Flanders Fields" (1915).  Here's the first 2 lines of that poem:  "In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row."  Its first lines guaranteed that the poppy became the flower of remembrance for that great conflict.    My picture was shot through the glass floor and didn't turn out very clear.

The tour starts with a 12-minute video that offers insight into world events that led to the war .  Then we entered into the exhibit hall and were met with these huge Portrait Walls that almost overpower you.  We wandered on through the various displays -- lots to read, starting with a monthly account before America entered the war.  A second video  depicts America on the threshold of war and what led to the decision to enter the war.

Of course, many of the weapons from that war were on display,

 including a torpedo and a land mine.

Also displayed were a team of horses pulling artillery, a Ford vehicle used for transporting men and supplies, and a small plane.

We had an excellent lunch in the museum cafe, then went outside and took the elevator to the top of the 217-foot Tower.  We had great views of the city from there, but it was a bit chilly.

Ray and Linda had to assume their camp hosting duties at 3:00 so we headed back to the park and dropped them off, then got to watch the last 62 laps of the rain-delayed NASCAR race.  I really thought my guy was going to win this one (he would have if they had called the race then), but he ended up third.

We have a small family of geese that saunter through the campground between the lake and our RV every morning, the parents and 4 babies. But when they heard me coming, they took to the water.

This is one of the prettiest campgrounds we have ever stayed in, and we are right on the water.  Joe keeps trying to figure out how to get our boat here.  We've seen a couple fish jump, there was a sailboat out here when we got back today and we've seen some fishing boats pass by, and some guys had fishing poles out just down from us, but we don't know if they had any luck.  If the sun comes out, we may never leave here.

Our plan is to leave here on Wednesday, heading into Daniel Boone territory.  We are assuming we will be able to cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis, so I hope it doesn't rain any more back there.

Smithfield Lake & Campground (Saturday)

Today's Excellent Adventure might have been watching Joe hook up the car, shivering and shaking, and complaining, the whole time while I sat inside the car doing my thing.  It was 41, cloudy, misty rainy -- a bit chilly for us thin-blooded Arizona folks.

We knew we didn't have too far to go today, so we weren't in any hurry to get started.  We got on the road about 10:35.  It was a little windy, but not too bad.  We know it can get a lot worse.  We hit Kansas City just about noon, coming through on I-35 and except for some road construction, it was a fairly easy drive through town.

We crossed the Missouri River and were out of Kansas!  The bridge was rather interesting.  The river wasn't flooded, unlike the ones coming up as we head further east.  Notice that beautiful sky in the background.  We are ready for some sunshine.

Our destination today is Smithville Lake Campground, where acquaintances of ours (and good friends of Collins and Marilyn) are camp hosts here for the summer.  Ray and Linda Malloy checked us in, then joined us for dinner and a fun evening.  This is a beautiful campground, lots of grass and trees, a huge lake, and camp sites just a few feet from the water.  There are over 400 campsites here, but only a handful were in use since the weather has been so crummy.  Linda said they see lots of deer here, but so far all we've seen is ducks and geese.  There's crappie, bass, catfish and walleye in this lake, so we might have to go find a fishing license.  We have our fishing poles and tackle box with us.

We have a list of possibilities of things to see here in Kansas City, so we will spend a few days here.  We are hoping for some sunshine, and better weather is forecast for tomorrow.  We are running out of long-sleeve shirts and jeans, so we are hoping it will get warmer soon.  But not too much warmer.

From Dodge City to Emporia (Friday)

Today is a travel day, we are done in Dodge City.  We didn't have any snow this morning and the winds were fairly calm until about 11:00 a.m., temperature was 35 at 6:30 but it made it into the 50s during the day.  As we slid the slides in, the ice slid off the top of the slides.  Then we were good to go. 

Our intent is to make it to Emporia today.  We got on the road at 9:20.  We haven't done much winter RV camping, and at this campground in Dodge City, since they were expecting the temperature to drop below freezing, they came around at night and unhooked everyone's water, locked their water faucets down, and then came back around the next morning when it got above freezing and unlooked the faucets.  We didn't hook up to water here so it didn't affect us, but I did see the owner/host/whatever he was, come around and turn everyone's water back on.

We took the scenic route across Hwy 50, which took us past lots and lots of wheat fields, most of them waving green at us.  Some of these farmers are fortunate, they are able to hedge their farming risk by an oil well right in their wheat field.  (Remember you can click on the picture to make it bigger so you can see it better).  There seemed to be a little more moisture on this side of Kansas, but we also saw lots of irrigation pipe.  Joe saw one of those outside of Dodge that had 10 sections, and Joe thought each section was probably 100 ft, so that would be 1000 ft they could irrigate with one of these pivot systems.  We saw one field that was even a little hilly, and Joe was surprised it could navigate that kind of terrain.

Every little town had grain elevators, some more than one, always along the railroad tracks.  And these towns were about 8-10 miles apart.  We came through a pretty good-sized windmill farm, and with the wind we have endured here it seemed like a no-brainer.  They should have more of these!

Our wildlife today consisted of 4 baby red foxes playing in and out of their den which happened to be right alongside the highway.  And we saw one wild turkey.  I was really sorry I missed getting a picture of the foxes because they were close and I saw them early, but I couldn't figure out what they were.  We first thought they were cats.

We thought we might make it further than Emporia because we were rolling along pretty good, but then the winds kicked up just before noon, and it became a battle again.  We reached Emporia about 2:45, fueled, then found a place to buy propane (which took forever because some idiot parked next to the propane tank and walked inside the gas station and apparently disappeared for a while.  So those two stops took an hour!  We ended up on a Walmart parking lot for the night.  We had driven past an RV campground just out of town, but we really didn't need any hookups so we went cheap.  We drove 229 miles today.  Gas was $3.399 here, but propane was $3.09 (we had seen it in Chino Valley for $1.55).