We got into the rally grounds early, about 11:30, because we wanted to make sure we got parked today. They close the parking at 2:00, so if you arrive after 2:00 you have to find somewhere else to spend the night. The rally doesn’t actually start until Sunday, but we like the two early parking days to let us get settled and tour the local area before the rally actually gets going. This rally is at the Missouri State Fairgrounds and the venue has a number of large campgrounds with full hookup sites, water, power and sewer, which makes for a great rally. We have a nice grass site with a little shade and are parked right next to our friends, Ray and Suzie Babcock, who traveled with us here from Bowling Green, Missouri.
Once we got setup and had lunch we left with Ray and Suzie to do some local geocaching. We had to cache today to get one for our days of the year challenge. We got ten new finds, along with one DNF. After caching we drove around town for a while, looking at the great old historic center of Sedalia. While we were doing that we ran across the Sedalia Elks Lodge. Since it was 4:30 we decided to stop and have a cocktail.
The Sedalia Elks is Lodge 125, chartered in 1889, which makes it one of the older surviving Elks Lodges. It is in a great old building that they built in 1926. The outside looks like a very upscale residence. It has a great clubroom and game room downstairs, and most of the second floor is taken up by a very pretty dedicated Lodge Room. We got a tour of the place from one of the Past Exalted Rulers and also met the lady who is the current Exalted Ruler. The lodge was very friendly and bought our second drink for us. After our drinks, and buying lodge pins, we went back to the fairgrounds. We had another cocktail sitting outside with Ray and Suzie, and then went back to our coach and had dinner on our own and then relaxed with the TV the rest of the night.
Saturday, September 15th, the weather forecast called for a chance of showers and the temperatures had fallen into the high fifties. Since there were no rally activities for the day, we left with Ray and Suzie about 10:30 for some more geocaching and exploration of Sedalia. Our first stop was the registration center for the rally so we could pick up our name tags and goody bags. Once we got those we started geocaching, starting with a couple that were right on the fairgrounds property. Once again we had ten new finds within a couple of hours, along with another new DNF. One of the caches took us to a resale store and after finding the cache we went in for a little shopping. I found a very nice winter coat which appeared to be brand new for $22. My guess is that it would retail for over $200. Sometimes caching takes you to great places.
We then stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was called Joyous China Restaurant and had been recommended by someone at the Elks Lodge yesterday. The food was typical Chinese Buffet, but very tasty. Lunch was only $4.99, so it was a great deal too. We ate way too much, but we went away full. We then made a Walmart run before going back to the fairgrounds. We had cocktails with the Babcocks, but because we had such a big lunch we didn’t do any dinner. We spent the rest of the evening in the coach watching TV.
Sunday, September 16th, the first official day of the 52nd Escapees Escapade. We started the day by leaving the coach with Ray and Suzie at about 10:30 and driving over to the activities area for shopping. The vendor area opened this morning so it was our first opportunity to browse the RV related merchandise on sale. We actually had a fairly busy morning. I bought a new concealed handgun holster that I have been looking at for a while. As a retired law enforcement officer I have a Federal concealed carry permit that allows me to carry anywhere in the United States, regardless of state laws to the contrary. It doesn’t apply, of course, to airports, Federal Buildings, and private property which has been posted “no weapons,” but it does allow me to carry if I want most anywhere in public. I actually rarely do carry a weapon, but there are times and areas where I feel more comfortable armed, and I needed a better concealed holster.
I also bought a new digital tire gauge for the coach, but the big purchase of the day was new phones. Jackie has had her Blackberry smartphone for a couple years now and has some issues with it. Since she was eligible for an upgrade she stopped by the Verizon booth and ended up getting a new Motorola Razr smartphone with the Android operating system. Since our tablet is Android, she is pretty familiar with the system and a most of the apps we like on the tablet will work on the phone now too. Not so with the Blackberry system she had. I ended up getting a new phone too, since it was a free upgrade, but I still just have the old standard flip phone.
We had lunch right there on the fairgrounds. Most rallies we have been to that take place on fairgrounds require the rally organizers to use existing food vendors that are on the grounds. That always results in wildly inflated prices, like $7.00 hamburgers. At this rally the local Knights of Columbus Lodge brought their food truck and set up shop in front of the vendor building and are making a killing selling food at reasonable prices. They are also doing an inexpensive breakfast every morning. Good move Escapees!
After lunch we spent a little more time at the vendors before going back to the coach for a break. At 3:00 we went to the arena for the opening ceremonies for the rally. They introduced the rally organizers and the Escapees staff and had a showing of banners for various chapters of Escapees, but the big reason everyone came was they gave away a bunch of door prizes. Most were local restaurant and store gift certificates, but they were worth trying for. They also had two $500 cash awards. None of the four of us won anything today, but they do this all through the rally, so there is still hope.
Once the presentations were over we all went back to the coach and relaxed for a while. We had happy hour outside about 5:00 and then left about 6:15 to go back over to the arena for the evening’s entertainment. Tonight was comedian Yakov Smirnoff. Yakov has his own theater in Branson, Missouri, and we had seen him there during a trip in 2006. He, along with his parents, immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine, Soviet Union, in 1977 at the age of 26. At that time he was an art teacher and spoke little English. In 1986 he had already become a well known comedian and became a naturalized American Citizen. He opened his theater in Branson in 1992 and has been doing well every since. He put on a great show that was mostly stand-up comedy, but also part inspirational. He has this theory of life that is based around love and laughter, and he spent a lot of the show talking about how it all comes together. It was a really good show. He was only supposed to be on for an hour and half or so and he went almost two hours. By the time we got home it was almost 10:00. Great day at the rally.
Monday, September 17th, we had an early lunch at the coach and left about 11:00 for some seminars. Jackie and Suzie went to a session on how to use Picasa, a photo management software program, and Ray and I went to a session on tire safety, put on by a retired tire company engineer. Jackie said hers was good, and the one I went to was very educational. There wasn’t a lot that I didn’t already know, but there were a few things brought up that made for good reminders.
After the seminars we all went back to the vendor area for a while to do some shopping. Jackie had some questions about her phone and I bought a few little things for the motor home. After a little break at the coach all four of us went to a seminar on smartphones and applications. That was very informative, although they went through the material so fast I missed some of the information. It was still a good session, especially since one of the phones that they did the demo on was the same as the one Jackie just upgraded to.
After that session we took a cocktail break at the coach and then went over to the arena for the prize drawings at 7:00. Once again they gave away a lot of stuff, but none of it was for us. We left the arena at 7:45, after the drawings, to go get something to eat. The entertainment for the evening was tenor doing Broadway and opera tunes, and none of us were really very interested in hearing him. We went out to the nearby Golden Corral buffet for a late dinner. I say late, but it was only a little after 8:00 when we got there and the staff were already in the process of cleaning up for the night. It was really disgusting to have one of the staff cleaning the filters over the grill while there was still food on the hot table right under it and customers in the restaurant trying to get food to eat. We brought that to the managers attention, but she didn’t seem very interested. A lot of the food was getting cold because they had started to shut down the steam tables, and the selection got smaller and smaller as time went on. I usually like Golden Corral, but I will make sure that I never go to one close to closing time again. After dinner we went back to the campground and just relaxed the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, September 18th, Jackie and I were up, showered and out of the coach by 7:30 a.m., headed over for breakfast and an 8:15 seminar about Verizon cell phone issues. Although I thought I detected slight tremors in the space-time continuum, the universe didn’t collapse and we had a nice breakfast of bacon and egg sandwiches. We were up that early, and as you might guess it is rare, because the speaker, Pete Schmitz, is a very dynamic and interesting speaker. He has sort of taken on the role of ombudsman for Verizon Wireless with regard to RV customers. He is very knowledgeable and very helpful and we wanted to attend his session. We had heard him once before in Phoenix at the Good Sam rally back in March, but we missed some of the things he was talking about. In addition, things are always changing in the cell world and we wanted to hear the latest. We figured since we were going to be up anyway, we might as well have a light breakfast. They serve breakfast here at the rally every morning.
Ray and Suzie went to the seminar also and it proved to be very interesting and helpful. Ray is considering buying a new iPhone and wanted to hear about Verizon’s plans for smartphones. After the session we went back to the coach for a brief rest and then the four of us went out to explore and also to do some more geocaching. We didn’t have anything going on at the rally, that interested us, for the rest of the day. Our first destination was Whiteman Air Force Base, located about 20 miles west of Sedalia. Since Ray is retired Air Force he is able to gain access to military bases and we both wanted to visit Whiteman.
Whiteman AFB was founded in 1942 as Sedalia Army Air Field as a training field for glider pilots. In 1951 the new Strategic Air Command selected the base to be the home of the first wing of the new B-47 bomber, the first U.S. all-jet engine bomber. In 1955 the name was changed to Whiteman, in honor of George Whiteman, an Army Air Corps P-40 pilot killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor and honored as the first person killed in aerial combat in WW-II. In the 1960's the base became one of the control centers for the nation’s Minuteman Missile defense system and this mission remained with the base until the mid-90's. However, the reason we were anxious to visit the base is that in 1993 Whiteman became the headquarters of the only Air Force Bomb Wing to fly the B-2 Sprit stealth bomber. There are only 20 B-2 bombers in the entire U.S. inventory and all are housed at and flown out of Whiteman AFB.
Developed in the 1980's, the Spirit was initially developed as the replacement for the venerable B-52, a 1950's design. However, when the price per aircraft spiraled to over $2 billion, the planned order for 137 was pared back to 21 operational craft and the B-52 is still in service. What makes the Spirit special is it’s stealth design and “flying wing” configuration. It is nearly invisible to radar, even at close ranges. The craft has the wing span of a B-52, but the overall length of an F-15 fighter. It is not supersonic and has no defensive armament, relying on it’s stealth to get in and out of the target area safely. One B-2 was lost to a crash on take off in Guam in 2008.
Over the last few months we have been traveling with Ray and Suzie and during that time have gone onto several military installations. Normally, Ray drives up to the gate, shows his ID card and that, along with the base sticker on his car, gets access to the base. On one occasion Jackie and I had to show our driver’s license to the guard, but that was it. Today Ray drove up, gave the guard his ID and ID for the rest of us and he told us we had to go into the visitor’s office and get a pass. Jackie and I had to give our driver’s licenses to the guy in the office, he typed everything into the computer and took our photo. All of this was put on a paper pass, which included a barcode, and then we went back to the gate. The guard scanned Ray and Suzie’s military IDs and then our paper passes. We finally did get on the base, but it was pretty complicated.
Of course, the reason for the added security is pretty apparently. The entire long range stealth attack capability of the country is housed at this one base. We drove around the base for a while and noted that the fence alongside the road that paralleled the flight line was not just the usual six foot chain link with a strand of barbed wire. It was ten foot steel
We found one cache near the base, but we did most of it back in Sedalia. We managed to get another ten new finds, one of which was a cache that we had DNFed a couple days ago. We noticed that the owner had replaced the cache, which was missing when we looked for it, so we went out and captured the find. We like fixing DNFs. We also had a new DNF for the day. Oh well, net zero on DNFs. After caching we went back to the coach for a brief rest.
About 4:30 we went out for dinner with some friends of Ray and Suzie’s, John and Jana. They are former neighbors of Ray and Suzie’s from back in California and they stay in touch. They happened to be at this rally, so we all went out to dinner. We went to a local restaurant called Little Big Horn Steakhouse. The restaurant had been recommended by several people and had marketed themselves with a flyer in the goody bag that was given out when you arrived at the rally. We had seen the place a few days back because there is a geocache in their parking lot, which we found.
Although the place was recommended to us, I would not recommend it to anyone else. Although the six of us got seated as soon as we arrived, the hostess was not especially friendly, in fact she made a snippy comment, something like “one at a time, OK?” when two of us inadvertently asked the same question at the same time. Our regular waitress was fine, but for a restaurant that advertises as a steakhouse they had a very limited menu. Prime rib on the weekends only, and only three other cuts of beef on the menu. Jackie had a strip steak and I had a rack of ribs. It was really odd because her steak came out seared rare, very red in the middle, but it was very dry. I have never seen a rare steak be dry. She also said it had almost no taste and the texture was odd, almost like it had been over-tenderized. My ribs were way over done and dried out as well. None of the other people at the table had steaks or ribs, and they didn’t have any big complaints about their food. I would not bother with the place if you ever find yourself in Sedalia, Missouri. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Wednesday, September 19th, the weather was still chilly. Summer seems to have decided it’s time to leave. It felt colder because the wind was blowing pretty hard. Some of the gusts were very strong, so I decided to put in the window awnings, just to be on the safe side. We didn’t leave the coach really early, we didn’t do breakfast. The universe is back in sync again. We left the coach about 11:00, after an early lunch, and went down to the vendor area to take care of a few last minute things. This is the last day for the vendors, although the rally continues through tomorrow. Ray wanted to go to the Verizon booth and order his new iPhone 5 and I needed to pick up a door prize I won at one of the insurance booths. That turned out to be a “claims kit”, a little zipper envelope with a pen, paper and a disposable camera. I guess you carry it in your car in case of an accident you can document everything.
We also went over to what the rally calls “The Row” which is the area where all of the various Escapee Chapters, groups and RV parks set up booths. It is similar to the Chapter Fair at FMCA rallies, except that at Escapees they stay set up for the entire rally, not just a couple of hours. They had a little game where they gave each of us a little card that looked like a Bingo card, with the logos from 24 of the chapters at The Row printed on it. You had to go around the room and get each of the chapters on your card to mark your card. Once you got the card filled you put it in a drawing for some prizes. Jackie and I did our cards in about 20 minutes or so and then we waited around for the 2:00 drawing. We didn’t get anything. Oh well. After the drawing we went back to the coaches and relaxed for a while. Jackie baked her chili reallno casserole for dinner and Ray made some great Mexican rice to go with it. We had dinner about 5:30 in our coach and it was great. Just before 7:00 we went down to the arena for the night’s door prize drawings and then the talent show. We didn’t win any prizes. One last chance tomorrow.
The talent show, called Ham O’rama, is an Escapade staple, they have one at every big rally. One of the participants was a guy that we know from the Western Horizons park in Ehrenberg, Arizona. His name is Brad and he was the staffer who put on the Friday night karaoke at the park. We decided to stay for the entertainment to support him, and to see what else there was to offer. Most of it was OK, if a little corny, but they tried. There were a couple of people playing instruments, a lot of singers, and a couple of people who did readings. One lady got up and did a stand-up comedy routine that was not too bad. Brad did Wonderful World in a Louis Armstrong voice and was very good. We left after Brad’s performance, but they had been going for almost two hours by then and there were still people waiting to go on. We went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Thursday, September 20th, the last full day of the rally. We got up and out of the coach fairly early so we could make an 11:00 session that was a lecture by one of the Public Information Officers from Whiteman AFB, talking about the base and the B-2. It dovetailed nicely with our visit to the base a couple days before. The young female Airman that gave the talk was polite and informative, but she didn’t give much more information that we already knew. Most everything else would probably be classified. After the lecture we watched the pet parade, which only took about a half hour. Lots of cute dogs, some in some really neat costumes. My favorite was a Papillon,
After the pet parade we picked up Suzie at the coach, she didn’t go the morning activities, and all went out to lunch at Applebees. Ray and Suzie had to run some errands after lunch, so we went to the local Penny’s store and shopped for a little bit after lunch. At 3:00 we all were back at the fairgrounds and attending the closing ceremonies for the rally. They were giving away the grand door prize, a commercial caravan package worth over $2,000, but we didn’t win it. Went to every door prize drawing and didn’t win anything! Poop. We did learn that there were 587 rigs in attendance at the rally, with over 1,200 attendees. Not a bad attendance in these economic times. After the closing ceremonies we went back to the coaches for the rest of the night. Jackie had a bad headache, so she laid down for a nap and I spent some time putting things away to be ready for tomorrow’s travels. I had cocktails with Ray and Suzie and then we just relaxed in the coach the rest of the night.
Friday, September 21st, another travel day and the end of the rallies for this year. We were packed up and on the road just before 10:00. Ray and Suzie had left about 9:00. We had thought they might travel with us for a little while longer, but they decided they needed to be back in California by the 6th of October, so they were going to hurry back. We are taking a more leisurely trip back, looking to be in Pahrump by the 26th of October.
Today’s trip was about 160 miles and took us into Kansas to Lake Melvern and a Corps of Engineers RV campground. Lake Melvern is about 80 miles southwest of Kansas City. The Corps of Engineers has a number of very nice RV campgrounds at various lake and river projects around
The wind was blowing very hard, so once we got set up we just settled in and enjoyed the peace and quiet of our own coach. Jackie had put dinner in the crock pot before we left, so we had a nice dinner and watched TV the rest of the night. We will be here for five days, a great time to relax and unwind from the hubbub of the rally circuit.
Saturday, September 22nd, a beautiful Kansas fall morning. The wind had died down to a brisk breeze and the temperature was in the low 60's when we woke up. We relaxed around the coach all morning, taking care of some chores and just enjoying the quiet without any time constraints or commitments. I did some trip planning, trying to find a way back to the west without having to spend the entire trip going back through places we have been before. We had lunch and then packed up our dirty clothes to go out and do laundry. It has been over two weeks, so we have quite a pile of clothes to wash. We are kind of out in the wilds of east Kansas here, surrounded by small, farming towns. The nearest laundromat we could find was in the little town of Waverly, about eleven miles from the campground.
We arrived in Waverly and found a very quaint, but typical small prairie town. Most everything in the downtown area was closed up and the buildings vacated, but we did find the laundry in a little shack on main street. They did have five working washers, which was just what
In less than two hours we had our clothes washed, dried and folded and we were good for another couple of weeks. On the way back to the campground we stopped and did some geocaches, including one in a small, local cemetery. We only did three caches, all of which were on our way back to the coach. I fixed a nice pot of chili for dinner and then we spent the rest of the evening in the coach, watching TV and relaxing.
Sunday, September 23rd, we decided we needed a stay at home day, so we did. I spent most of the day in the “Man Cave” and did some trip planning and other administrative work. I knew we were going to be back in Pahrump on the 26th of October, we have reservations at our old Western Horizons park. However, I had still been undecided on the route we would take. I finally settled on the “back roads” option instead of the freeway. Back roads still means Federal numbered highways, but rather than just jump on I-70 or I-40 and go back through places we have been several times in the past, we would stay on the lesser roads and go straight west through Kansas, stopping in towns we have never seen. Jackie also got a few chores done, but mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed a quiet day on our own.
Monday, September 24th, we had a great day with lots of sunshine and moderate temperatures in the 70's, so we decided to go caching. We left the coach after lunch and did some “local” caching, which in the wilds of Kansas means about a 20 mile radius of the campground. It took us about three and a half hours, but we managed to get ten new finds, along with a couple of DNFs. We drove through several of the small, farming towns scattered around our location, including Melvern, Quenemo and Lyndon. Melvern has a very small downtown that is mostly abandoned and Quenemo has no commercial area at all. Lyndon is the county seat, so it is a little bigger and appeared to be doing a little better.
We also visited the other Corps of Engineers lake, Pomona Lake, which is about 20 miles north of Melvern Lake, where we are parked. There is a big State Park on that lake which also has full hookup sites, although it is not as nice looking a campground as the one we are in. After caching we went back to the coach and had dinner before relaxing the rest of the night.
Tuesday, September 25th, we left the coach fairly early, a little after 10:00, for a drive to Topeka, the capital of Kansas. Topeka is only about 35 miles north of our campground on Highway 75, and we have never been there before. It only took about 45 minutes to get to the edge of town and once we got there we started out by doing some geocaching. By the end of the day we had gotten eight new finds with no DNFs. Once our caching had moved us to a point near the downtown area we stopped caching and did some exploring.
Topeka, founded in 1854, is a city of nearly 130,000 and lies on the bank of the Kansas River. According to my research the name Topeka is a word in the local Kansas Indian language which means “to dig good potatoes.” I had expected a Civil War general or
One of the most famous historical events associated with Topeka is the Brown vs. The Board of Education case, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision which eliminated the “separate but equal” doctrine for public education. I was familiar with the case from my college courses years ago, but had forgotten that the case was centered in Topeka. The old Monroe Elementary school which was the origin of the case is now a National Historic Site.
After driving around for a while and getting feel for Topeka we decided to get some lunch. Prior to leaving the coach I had found that there was one restaurant in Topeka that had been featured on Guy Fieri’s Food Network show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
We are big fans of that show and like to visit Triple D restaurants when we can. This particular place is called BoBo’s Drive In, on 10th Avenue and Mac Vicar Avenue, and is a true, old fashioned drive in. The restaurant was established in 1948 and has been at this same location since 1953. It is very small and very old looking, with a tiny little inside dining room and a large, canopy covered car hop lot out back. The inside has about five small tables and a little eight seat counter. They still provide car hop service, just like in the old days, and we chose to eat in the car. I can’t tell you how long it has been since I have eaten lunch in a car off a window tray!
Although the place looks like a bit of a dump on the outside, the ratings sites on the Internet all gave it high marks and great praise. However, had it not been a Triple D featured place,
After lunch we did a little shopping. It has been a while since we were close to a big city, so we hit a couple of craft stores as well as Sam’s Club and Walmart. Once we had completed our shopping we drove back south to our campground, getting there just as the predicted rain started to fall. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the coach, listening to the thunderstorms rumbling around us.
Wednesday, September 26th, we awoke after a bit of a restless night. Before we went to bed last night I had been watching the thunderstorms on the computer and they were going all around us, but not on top of us. About midnight that changed and we had about three hours of intense thunderstorms. High winds, torrential rain and lots of lightening. At one point I got up and put down the satellite dish just to be on the safe side. We didn’t have a lot of trees around us and I didn’t want to attract any stray lightening bolts. When I got up in the morning we actually had a few leaks in the coach, probably brought about as a result of the high winds blowing the rain up under the slide toppers and then in the slide from there.
The weather was actually pretty nice by the time we woke up, partly cloudy with just a little breeze. We had to go out and find at least one geocache today because it was a blank day on our days of the year caching challenge. We left after lunch to get a couple of geocaches fairly close to home. We ended up getting three new finds in about an hour and managed to get the Jeep coated in mud. There are a lot of dirt farm roads in this part of Kansas and the rain last night really turned them to soup. I actually got out the hose after we got back to the coach and tried to rinse off the big chunks of mud. By mid afternoon the shade screens on the coach had finally dried, so I spent a little time taking them down and putting the other outside stuff away. We are leaving here tomorrow and I wasn’t sure that there wasn’t going to be more rain before morning. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the coach, relaxing and watching TV.
Thursday, September 27th, we woke up again to partly cloudy skies. We didn’t get any rain overnight and I only heard one distant thunderstorm in the middle of the night. We packed up the coach and were on the road by 10:00, heading southwest to our next destination, Halstead, Kansas. Halstead, about 160 miles from Melvern Lake, is a small farming town of about 2,000 population. It is on U.S. 50, about 12 miles west of I-135, and is about 35 miles north of Wichita, Kansas. We made the journey without running into any rain, although the skies were overcast the whole time.
We arrived at the Spring Lake RV Resort, just outside Halstead, about 1:30 and got settled into our site. This is a Passport America park, so we got the site at half price, a full hookup, 50 amp site for $14 a night. Not the fanciest park in the world, but it is OK and inexpensive. It appears to be on the site of an old farm, there is still part of a silo near the entrance, and the sites are scattered around a series of cow ponds. The people are very friendly and chatted us up as soon as we walked in the office. Some other people pulled into the park right behind us and in talking to them we learned that there is a Kansas State Good Sam Rally next week in Hutchinson, Kansas, just a few miles down the road, a rally that we had not been aware of. Since our schedule for the next few weeks is very loose, we are going to consider attending the rally. We need one more rally. We got settled into our spot and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing and handling a few chores.
Friday, September 28th, we left the coach after lunch to do some exploring and geocaching in the area. Our first stop was the town of Halstead, which didn’t take too long. According to the folks at the RV park, the most interesting thing to see in Halstead is the Old Hardware Store. Back in 1885 a stone building was built on the main street and a hardware store
We did a couple of caches in Halstead before moving a little further east to the much larger town of Newton, Kansas. Newton is a city of about 20,000 which was established in 1871 as a railhead between the Chisom Trail and the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railroad. The Chisom Trail was the route used by Texas cattle ranchers to drive their cattle north to Kansas where they were loaded onto trains for shipment north and east. Today the city is mostly an adjunct to Wichita, about 20 miles south. We explored the Newton downtown and cached, ending up with ten new finds for the day, along with two new DNFs. We quit caching just about the time the rain started again. No thunderstorms, but rain coming down so hard that at times it was difficult to see the road. After caching we went back to the RV park and relaxed the rest of the night. Fortunately, the rain stayed to the east and we didn’t get anything more than a couple of sprinkles at the RV park.
Saturday, September 29th, we left the coach about 11:00 for a day in Wichita. Wichita is another of the big, Midwest cities that we have never had the opportunity to visit. Wichita is the largest city in Kansas, with a population of over 630,000. The city was founded in 1870 as part of the westward expansion of the railroads and, like Newton to the north, became a “cowtown” as a result of it’s location on the Chisom Trail. In 1914 oil was discovered nearby and Wichita became a major oil center. The money derived from oil allowed local entrepreneurs to invest in the just emerging airplane industry. Over the years nearly every name in aviation was associated with Wichita. This included Cessna, Beech, Stearman, Travel Air, Curtis Wright, and Mooney. All of these companies started in Wichita, along with many other aviation related companies. The city earned the name, “Air Capital of America” and still holds that title. Today, Cessna LearJet (now Bombardier) and Beechcraft are still headquartered in Wichita and have their primary manufacturing facilities in the city, and both Boeing and European Airbus have manufacturing facilities and technology centers here. A look at a map shows a dozen airports surrounding the city, including McConnell Air Force Base.
The city experienced a population explosion during World War II when it became a major manufacturing center for the Boeing B-29 airplanes needed in the war effort. By 1945, an average of 4.2 bombers were being produced daily in Wichita. For many years Boeing was Wichita's largest employer. After WW-II Boeing made Wichita the headquarters for the Boeing Military Airplane Company and the plant produced all of the B-47 bombers, the nation’s first all-jet engine bomber. Many of the later B-52 bombers were also built in Wichita. The Boeing plant was adjacent to McConnell AFB and used the same runways. The two Boeing 747 aircraft that serve as Air Force One were brought to the Wichita Boeing plant in the late 1980's where the modifications were completed to turn them into the VC-25 aircraft that are used by the President.
Our first stop after getting into Wichita was to find some lunch. One of the tourist magazines we had picked up at the RV park had an advertisement for a place called Jimmies Diner which claimed to be a 50's style eating place. We weren’t too far away, so that’s where we headed. Turned out to be a great decision. Jimmies is in a very retro looking building, all shiny aluminum and curvy and the inside was very retro also. All the wait staff was dressed 50's style, pink and black, poodle skirts, the whole thing. The menu was also very 50's, hamburgers of course, but also meatloaf, liver and onions, and other comfort foods. Jackie and I both had cheeseburgers that were very close to the best we have ever had. They just had the taste that takes you back to the days of hand formed burgers. I had tater tots with mine that were great, along with a real strawberry milkshake. They brought the milkshake in an old fashioned glass and then left the metal shake container with the leftovers on the table, just like they did in the old days. It was a very fun lunch with very good food. Jimmies is on Rock Avenue, around 33rd street. I would highly recommend it if you are in Wichita and looking for a fun meal. They also do breakfast and dinner, by the way.
After lunch we drove into the center of town. While we were eating lunch we bought a local paper and learned that McConnell AFB was having their annual air show this weekend. We hoped to be able to see the Thunderbirds Air Team perform at 3:00. While we were driving down the freeway, only a few miles north of the base, we heard the roar of jet engines and an F-17 stealth fighter flew over and he only looked like he was a few hundred feet above the ground. Very loud and it scared the crap out of Jackie. We spent some time driving around downtown Wichita, which is situated on the east bank of the Arkansas River. We also did some geocaching near the center of town and several of the caches took us to interesting historical places. In the downtown area the City has placed dozens of bronze statues. Some are very small, birds and frogs, some are very large. One of the statues commemorates the lunch counter sit-ins of the early 60's I was able to actually sit at the counter. Very realistic. We also did several of a series which took us to the site of very early aircraft manufacturers, companies that were created at the turn of the century, in the late teens, and early 20's. Of course, none of the original buildings still remained, but you could get a sense of how the area might have looked back then from the descriptions provided by the person who hid the caches. We ended up with eleven new finds and no DNFs. One of the caches we found was number 4,300, another milestone for us. Yea!
We had hoped to get out into the area of McConnell AFB, which is at the southeast edge of the city, by 3:00 but our caching and exploring took longer than we thought, so we missed the Thunderbirds. I did see one fly over the downtown area, but that was all. We finally started back towards the RV park about 4:30 after a very fun and interesting day in Wichita. After we got back to the coach we just relaxed and watched TV the rest of the evening.
Sunday, September 30th, we left the coach after lunch with the intention of doing a little geocaching and visiting an outlet mall that we had seen just off the freeway, on the southern edge of Newton. We had seen it the other day on our way down to Wichita. We got to the mall and to our disappointment found that most of the stores were empty. There was a multi-screen movie theater that seemed to be doing OK for business, but there were only a couple of retail stores still open, and none them interested us. Half the mall had been taken over by non-profits as office space. Oh well, no shopping today.
We decided we would spend a couple of hours geocaching instead, so off we went. We had already done all of the urban caches around Newton, so we were having to go out to do the more rural caches. This was fine except that it takes longer because the caches are miles apart rather than blocks. We ended up finding nine new caches in about three hours, along with one DNF. A couple of the caches were in cemeteries, they seem to like cemetery caches in the Midwest, so we got to see some pretty interesting tombstones. A lot of Civil War vets are buried around Kansas. Most of their graves are marked with bronze plaques. They are a small star with the dates 1861-1865 inside and the letters GAR. which stands for Grand Army of the Republic, on top of the star. GAR was the Union, I have not seen anything similar marking a Confederate grave, although I doubt there are many, if any, in this part of the country.
We also found one cute cache that was named “Don’t have a cow, Man” which is a phrase made famous by Bart Simpson in the animated Simpsons TV show. The cache was an ammo box and when you opened it there was a small plastic cow glued to the inside of the lid, along with a noise maker that made a “moo” sound when you opened the lid. Pretty funny. After our caching we drove back to the RV park and relaxed the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Monday, October 1st, our last full day at the Spring Lake Campground. Up until this morning the weather forecast for the rest of this week has been sunshine and warm temperatures. All of a sudden this morning its clouds, rain and cool temperatures. By noon we were getting rain sprinkles and black clouds. Rats. We did have to get at least one geocache today for our days of the year challenge, so after lunch we went out for a quick one or two close by caches. We went to the little town of Burrton, about five miles west of the campground, where I knew there were a couple of caches we had not looked for yet. Although it was raining lightly, we still went out and found two caches in the Burrton cemetery. Yea, we got the day marked off for our challenge. We also had one that we couldn’t find. We did a DNF for the cache, even though we didn’t give the search our full effort because of the rain and wind.
After caching we drove back to the town of Halstead so we could visit the Old Hardware Store. This time we found it to be open. We spent about a half hour wandering around in the store looking at the antique stuff. It is very unusual in that it truly is a working hardware store, but everything is in cases and on shelving that goes back to the turn of the century. There are tons of very old light fixtures, gas lamp fixtures, old cabinet hinges and pulls, everything you could think of that might be in a hardware store in 1920 or 1940. This would be a must visit place for anyone trying to restore a turn of the century home. After our tour of the Old Hardware Store we went back to the RV park and did one load of laundry at the park’s laundry facility. We just wanted to do enough to ensure that we wouldn’t have to worry about laundry while at the rally next week. Yes, we decided to do one more rally, so when we leave tomorrow we will only be going about 25 miles to Hutchinson, Kansas for a Good Sam Kansas Samboree. Should be fun.
After laundry we went back to the coach and sat and watched the rain. I managed to get the outside screens down before the evening rains started so I wouldn’t have to take them down in the morning if was still raining. Since we will be leaving here for another rally in the morning, this seems to be the ideal point to close this chapter of the blog and get it published. We’ll put up another episode in a couple of weeks. Until next time, remember that life is like a roller coaster, lots of ups and downs, twists and turns, laughs, screams and thrills. And, like a roller coaster, you only go around once, so enjoy the ride despite the dips. See ya soon.
