Saturday October 31 2009 by Leland.

Two Three things happen or happened on October 31.  First and obvious is another month is over.  Why do they go by so fast?  Second is that it is brother Glenn and SIL Vickie’s Anniversary.  Yep they got married on Halloween.  Of course the third is Halloween! 

This year we helped Pat and Jim manage the trick or treaters at their place in Olathe.  There was a pretty good turn out.  After a while Kelly came over with her two kids, in costume.  It was fun.

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Thursday October 29 2009 by Leland.

Remember I wrote about the Johnson County Museum  and how the stuff they had on display made me feel old.  Well, I found a few more photos.  This first one you’ll love and I bet you had one.

What, you claim you never had a “Day Timer”  You lie!

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Wednesday October 28 2009 by Leland.

On this day we crossed the border into Missouri again and visited Independance Mo.  Home of Harry S. Truman and home to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.  It was the usual palatial presidential library.  We have visited several others in our travels. 

The thing I found interesting was how much of what is going on today, was being dealt with by Harry S. Truman and how much of what is current history he directly caused or made happen by his policies and his beliefs.  If you are interested in the current strange political climate and think it’s all new, you should get a good book about Truman’s years as president and his actions. 

For more:  http://www.trumanlibrary.org/    Google Search of Truman books

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Wednesday October 28 2009 by Leland.

We left the White Cloud Casino area after drives around the area and into St. Joseph Mo.  It was a good stop.  We drove on down to Pat and Jim’s in Olathe Ks. where we became driveway dwellers.  Of course one of the results of visiting folks who have to work for a living is that they often go off to work and we are free to explore on our own.  To this end we struck out and explored.

We saw this great little museum up near Shawnee Ks.  It was the Johnson County Museum.  As you can see from the photos below, it was life and living through the years of settlement and the growth of the suburbs in that area with a focus on the big development years.  On the grounds they had “The 1950s All Electric House.”  A neat little suburban 2 or 3 bedroom brick house once set up to demo all electric living.  So funny.   Now don’t you just hate a museum full of things from your childhood.  Are you really old enough to be in a museum too?  Holy Cow.  How did that happen.

for more info visit  http://www.jocomuseum.org/

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Friday October 23 2009 by Leland.

In our efforts to find unique and cheap places we looked up the White Cloud Casino.  Free is a good price for full hookups RV sites.  We only had one problem, finding the place.  The website didn’t help much but a few phone calls and we found it.  It is not in White Cloud, it is out in the middle of no where in the corn fields.  BUT it made a nice place to stay and play a few slots.  The restraunt was pretty poor and we didn’t get rich but we did enjoy our stay.

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Friday October 23 2009 by Leland.

After our night in Nebraska we dropped back down to highway 35 Eastbound to see the sights of Kansas.  Don’t laugh, if you slow down and get off the Interstate there is a LOT to see in Kansas.

The Pony Express helped open up the wild wild west by delivering the mail in times that make the current U.S. Postal Service blush.  We visited several towns on the old Pony Express route.  Norton, Marysville, Smithville, and others.  These small towns all have stories to tell if you stop in and visit a while.

Some links for stories of the Pony Express are:

http://www.ponyexpress.org/   www.xphomestation.com/    www.nps.gov/poex/

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Wednesday October 21 2009 by Leland.

After we saw the “Also Rans” we headed further east in Kansas but couldn’t decide what to do for the night.  On a flip of the coin we headed about 17 miles out of our way to Alma Nebraska and the Harlan County Lake.  This is a Corps of Engineers lake and the campground was beautiful.  We had water, electric and sewer for $4.  Not too bad.  There were deer and deer hunters in the area but only two other rigs in this big campground. 

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Tuesday October 20 2009 by Leland.

After a wonderful visit with Glenn and Vickie and the add in pleasure of getting to visit with John and Cleo it was time to move on.  John and Cleo were leaving too but there was a difference in travel style.  By the time we got up and loaded they were gone and by the time we stopped by this little bank to see our next item, they were almost in Missouri.

We had read on the internet about the Gallery of the Also Ran’s and tracked it down.  This is the blurb on their website and our photos.  A very interesting stop.   History is everywhere isn’t it.

The mezzanine of the First State Bank in Norton, Kansas, holds the They Also Ran Gallery, a museum that consists of portraits of unsuccessful contenders for the office of President of the United States of America.  Most are from the nation’s two primary parties, Republican and Democrat.  The gallery of wood-framed portraits from the Library of Congress starts with Jefferson, who lost in 1796 to John Adams and won four years later against Aaron Burr.  Many that appear had been President, but lost when they ran for a second term.

W.W. Rouse, a former owner and president of the bank, started the gallery in 1965.  Mr. Rouse, an avid history buff, had just finished reading Irving Stone’s book, They Also Ran, about presidential candidates who lost.  Irving Stone’s book was especially appealing to Mr. Rouse because considerable attention was paid to Horace Greeley, the publisher of the New York Tribune.  Greeley reportedly stopped in Norton at Station 15 of Leavenworth Pike’s Peak Express Company stagecoach line on his campaign in 1872.  A reproduction of Station 15 is located at the Roadside Park on Highway 36 (across from the Dairy Queen) in Norton.  It’s called Station 15 because Norton was the 15th stagecoach stop from Kansas City to Denver.

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Monday October 19 2009 by Leland.

We were at Glenn and Vickie’s for a few days and getting ready to move on when we got word that Auntie Cleo and Uncle John were in the area and might be stopping over on their way to Missouri.  Wow!  We left the landing gear down and stayed.  It was the right decision.

John and Cleo drove down from Alaska in thier pickup and were working their way out to some realtives of John’s in Missouri.  Glenn and Vickie took us all out to see some local sites in Kansas and nearby Colorado.  The first few photos outdoors were at a historic battle field site near St.F.  It was a neat place to imagine history, walk out to hill tops to see where the attacks were, where the camps were.

Then we went over to Colorado nearby and visited a museum.  Turns out that John grew up near here and actually found some names on things that he knew.  This added greatly to the visit for all of us. 

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Friday October 16 2009 by Leland.

Kitten has been working on a new quilt/bed spread for our bedroom here on the Butterfly.  When she went down to Vickie’s basement she found this beautiful quilt and it inspired her even more. 

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