Tuesday November 10 2009 by Leland.

After Topeka I traveled on to another COE lake called Perry Lake  and found myself alone again.  Wow, is it ever peaceful this way.  BTW, when you see these blue underlined words, you can click on them to get some more info from a website. 

As you can see in the photo, it was cloudy and sure enough it rained.  I love the sound of rain on the roof of the RV.  The only issue here was that pretty soon I was hearing dripping in the shower.  ??  Investigation showed water dripping from the skylight.  I pulled the inside trim of the sky light to see where it was coming from and found it looked like just one place on the back outside edge.  Up on the roof and sure enough, there was a little dirt/silt spot on the caulking.  This is almost always the sign of where the water went in.  I hurridly dried the area with a hair dryer while under a pancho and put new caulking all around that area and then, just to be sure did the whole sky light perimeter.  Thankfully it continued to rain outside and stopped inside so I got it!  I left it opened up all night and no more drips.

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Sunday November 8 2009 by Leland.

From Pamona Lake to Topeka wasn’t very far, maybe 85 miles.  I explored on my MS Streets and Trips and there is a County Park and lake on the East side of Topeka.  It’s called Lake Shawnee County Park and it has an RV Park!  Off I went.  I got a site but barely.  They have dozens of sites but most were closed, remember it’s now November and not exactly camping season.  Most of the sites were closed because in December the County uses the RV park part of the lake facility as a Christmas (sorry) Holiday Lights display area with huge light sets of candles, Santa and other Christmas (sorry) Holiday scenes.  (I only acquiesce to the non Christian nomenclature because it’s a government facility.  Don’t get me started on when our goverment lost it’s religions. )

One of the things I saw by the highway to do here (other than my next post- wait for it) was the Topeka Combat Air Museum.  So after unhitching in my site, off I went.  It was a nice little Airplane museum and I really enjoyed the planes and visiting with a couple of the volunteers.

Here are a few of the photos: 

One of the things I really liked about this Museum is that you could go inside some of the bigger planes and a lot of the smaller ones on the ground had ladder viewing stands where you could see inside.  Nice touch.  Well worth a visit if you are in Topeka.

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Saturday November 7 2009 by Leland.

After a few days at Douglas County State Fishing Lake, I moved on but not too far.  West to Paloma Lake.  A Corps of Engineers (COE) lake.  There are multiple campgrounds around the lake and they were all open but only one had hookups working.  The one with hookups was below the spillway.  I settled in there but it didn’t take too much time (about 20 minutes) to figure out that this place had two things against it.  One, it had absolutely no views and Two, It was a hunting camp with the promise of a lot of party time by the local hunters who were all over in here.

I loaded up and moved to a lakeside campground.  It was open but empty and all utilities turned off.  No Problem.  I have my own utilities.  We got the premium lake front lot - of course, no one else here.  It was very windy but warm.  Cinnamon and I walked around a little and took some local drives.  Great views and beautiful weather.

So what do you do the most when it’s windy and beautiful out?

Sit in the picture window with a good book!  LIFE IS GOOD!

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Tuesday November 3 2009 by Leland.

We got a phone call that Kitten’s mom was in the emergency room and then was admitted in bad condition.  After much chagrin we determined that Kitten needed to be home to help.  We got the ticket and off she went.  The short of that story was that Grandma got better.  Thank the good Lord.

In the mean time, here I was in Pat and Jim’s driveway alone.  Well, not being one to just sit I decided to go out and explore Eastern Kansas.  I know you think it’s all just flat land and that the best thing that ever happened to Kansas was the Interstate but you would be wrong.

Kansas has among neat things like I mentioned before about the Pony Express and a great Civil War history, Lots of recreation opportunites.  These are in the form of State Fishing Lakes and Corps of Engineers lakes and State Parks and County Parks.  I was surprised as I started to look into it all.

The first was a State Fishing Lake called Douglas County Lake just north of Baldwin City.  This was an absolutely beautiful little lake with several pull outs that made great camping sites.  These areas are primarily for fishing but are not marked no camping and “everyone does it.”  This being November, I pretty much had the run of the place.  Imagine this nice a camping place and no one camping but me.  Look at these photos!

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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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