May finds us in Missouri... |
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| Well, the first four days we are still in Texas,
Kerrville to be exact, but does that count? Otherwise, we will
be in Missouri all month, first in Cassville, then on up to Kansas
City for a genealogy conference and then over close to St. Louis for
more wine... and other fun things to do. Besides go to wineries, we did try to get in a little something else, I enjoy National Parks. When in Texas, one has a tendency to think of LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson (especially when you see all the wildflowers). LBJ's childhood home and ranch are not too far away from Kerrville, so we headed out to both. We only got as far as the visitor center at the ranch because it would be another hour before they did the tour, we decided to save that for another trip. We headed a little further east to Johnson City (actually named for a cousin of LBJ's) to check out the LBJ Nat'l Historical Park. |
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| The entrance to the LBJ ranch. It would have been fun to do the tour, but not this trip. | The visitors center at LBJ's childhood home. |
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| Across the street from the visitor center is the house. Built in 1901, the LBJ's parents purchased it in 1908. We toured through the house and then walked on down to the Johnson Settlement where LBJ's grandparents log cabin still sits. | This is a REALLY big, REALLY old oak tree on the settlement property. I was checking it out. There also was an exhibit center that told about how LBJ's grandparents use to take their cattle up the Chisholm Trail. |
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| Texas longhorn's, this is the type of cattle they would drive up the Chisholm Trail, it was the only breed that could stand that long trip. | As we were walking on trail back to the parking lot, we found this bar. I wanted to stop and have a beer, but Jim didn't want to stop, so we kept on going. I thought it was pretty interesting. |
| We are now on our way to Missouri, leaving the big state of Texas until November. | |
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| We needed to stop to get some diesel, we stopped here on the turnpike in Oklahoma. Jim wasn't very happy, it was pretty tricky to get around all these Harley's and the truck on the right to squeeze into a stall to get our diesel, but Jim can do anything! | We put in a few more gallons than this, this was left over from the previous customer. I wanted to show you the price of $4.02 a gallon for diesel. We put in just over 100 gallons, yikes! |
| One of the reasons we are in Cassville of all
places, is so that I can work on Jim's family genealogy. There
are several cemeteries in the area where many of his relatives are
buried. I wanted to get pictures of their tombstones if we
could find them.
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| Jim's mothers' maternal grandparents, so that would make them Jim's great-grandparents. Some people get all the luck in their names. Jim's great-grandfathers full name was Goldman Buford Leland Kimbrel Hancock. | Beulah (Martin) Waddle's parents, Jim's grandparents. I believe he did meet his grandmother Gail when he was a child. |
| We are now in Kansas City, staying at Worlds of Fun amusement park. | |
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| The first day here was very wet as you can see. Wet, wet, wet! It scrambled our satellite reception too, and I was taping a movie :P Then, the wind blew and blew all night, rock'n and roll'n the RV. Jim slept through it all, while I tossed and turned. Oh well, the next day was Mother's Day and I got to sleep in to make up for the lack of sleep that night. | What a great view, the Kansas City, MO skyline in the back ground and our home on wheels :) |
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| Monday the 12th was looking like the best day of the week, so we headed over to the park. Here we are on the Mamba ride, don't tell my family I went on it, but I took all the precautions for my back. | Here we are on the Viking Voyager, Jim was trying to keep the nose of the car up so that we wouldn't get that wet, it helped a lot, but we still got splashed on the sides. Luckily, it was warm enough for this ride, but we didn't do any of the other water rides since they would have gotten us "way" wet. |
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| The view from where I sit and work on my computer, how fun is that? we can hear the chug, chug, chug of the chain pulling them up and then the screams as they go down the other side.... This is the Mamba ride that our first picture is from. | What a great end to a fun day. You can't beat these kinds of views from the window of your home. |
 James Laube (Wine Spectator)Posted: Friday, May 16, 2008Robert Mondavi, a visionary winemaker and brilliant marketer who helped lead California wine into international prominence, died at 9 a.m. on May 16th, at home in Yountville, Calif. He was 94. |
Sad but true, a great person in the wine industry passed away on May 16th. I had to put in a small tribute to a man that made a difference to wine in California and the entire industry of wine in the United States. |
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| This is why we don't have a yard :) Dawn is busy mowing her north forty as Jim and I show up for dinner. The lawn mower looks like fun though! | Dawn was well prepared, she already had happy hour all set up for us. She shared a bottle of Kansas wine from Somerset Ridge. The wine is called Ruby Red (2004) and is a Bordeaux style blend and was very good. |
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| We chatted so much we ended up going out to dinner and we all decided on Kansas City style BBQ. We went to Dawn & Robert's favorite place, Jack Stack BBQ. It was about a 20 minute ride from their house, but then they are out in the boonies! :) | Our table is full of great food & friends Dawn & Robert, the BBQ was excellent and way too much. You too can have your own Jack Stack, they will ship to you anywhere. Check out the link to the left... |
| We left Kansas City and took I-70 East, but I didn't want to stay on the interstate for the whole trip. We dropped off at Columbia (home of MU) and headed a little south to US-50 just outside of Jefferson City, the Capital of Missouri. Oh yeah, you can't guess who it was named for :P | |
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| I snagged a picture of the top of the capital building as we drove by. I was trying to navigate Jim through the streets too, so I am surprised I even got a semi-decent picture. | Parts of US-50 go along the Lewis & Clark Trail. We have now been on different parts in OR, WA, ID, MT and MO. |
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| Just imagine the road as their trail (this is part of the Lewis & Clark Trail), it wouldn't have looked much different other than more trees where there is ribbons of concrete. It would have been beautiful but so very treacherous in their time. | We are sorry we are going to miss the 15th Annual Testicle Festival in Olean, MO. Many have enjoyed it, just Google it :) but it has had it's controversies also. It must be a lucrative festival, they had $12,000.00 stolen from the kitty by forgery in 2000-2001 time frame :P |
| We arrived safe and sound at Villa Ridge, MO. We are staying at an RV park that we have stayed at before. We will be here for two weeks so that we can do a few things around St. Louis like wine tasting, and seeing the sights. We did two wine tasting trips, check out Missouri Sipping to see those adventures. Otherwise, I did laundry, genealogy and walked in the mornings. We had a few thunderstorms pass through, they are always interesting. We went square dancing on the last day of May and drove through some torrential rain during one of those storms. Had a great time dancing though, we danced with the Singles & Doubles of Webster Grove with a guest caller (Larry Dudgeon).
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| This was one of our excursions, I wanted to try out Ted Drewes Frozen Custard Concretes (like a DQ Blizzard). I had the Cardinal Sin which was chocolate with sour cherries, yummy. There are two of them in St. Louis, this one is on Chippewa along the old Route 66. It was there even then... | Here Jim is paying for our treats, we left with sunshine, but once we got here it was raining. Warm, but raining. We enjoyed our concretes and then went home (had planned on going on to the Gateway Arch). |
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| We have inadvertently traveled now on a lot of the Historic Route 66 in AZ, NM, KS and now MO. | No matter the weather, the next day (Sunday of Memorial Weekend), we went to the Gateway Arch (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial). We have been here before, but Jim didn't remember much. |
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| We watched the movie about the Lewis & Clark expedition. It was very informative and we really enjoyed it. After that, we got in line to go up to the top of the arch. The doors above are people coming into the visitor center, the people going down are in line to go into the the little tram capsules that take you up to the top. | This is a view of Busch Stadium from the top of the Arch. You can see a long ways on a bright sunny day, but we had clouds and off and on rain... |
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| Looking down one of the sides of the arch from the top. I had a little problem taking this picture, I started to get vertigo or something, it was a little weird, looking down at a very weird angle. | Another interesting aspect of the arch... |
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| On Labor Day we took a little drive to the Cabela's store. I order from the catalog and online all the time, but never have been to one. Not as big as the Bass Pro Shops, but still, pretty huge. We didn't find anything to buy, but I came home and ordered a few things... | Inside the store, there are LOTS of stuffed animals, not the squishy kind you get to play with, but full size, taxidermy animals. A really great job of it too. They were fun to look at. |
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| Jim and I took a little day trip over to Randolph County, Illinois so that I could do a little genealogy. Our first stop was Chester, IL (the county seat for Randolph), home of Popeye :) This was my second trip here. | After wine tasting around St. James, we drove up through Cuba to get home. We went into Cuba looking for dinner. Once again, we are on Route 66... |
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After the wine tasting, we needed some sustenance and I decided on BBQ. I couldn't pass up the name, Missouri Hick Bar-B-Q. The food was great and the price was so very right! We will be leaving BBQ country soon... |
I ordered the sampler plate, I almost always do because I can never make up my mind on what I want. Jim had a 1/2 rack of ribs (pork). Yummy! I had pulled pork, ribs, & brisket. |
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One of the things that Cuba, MO is famous for is their murals, this is a depiction of what happened one day in 1943 when Bette Davis and her husband came to town. She didn't want her picture taken but a reporter did it anyway! |
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No, we do not have a dog, my Mom got a new dog, meet Gita. Mom lost her dog Zia earlier this year and now has this cute Cairn Terrier. |
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| The beautiful gardenia bush in our front yard in TX. | Sharing new pictures of the calla lilies back in TX. I am so excited, look at the pretty pink colors! |
 This is what the current travel map looks like, the blue line is the drive line, each number is a stop along the way...#24 is Bar Harbor, ME, our most northern point. We will travel from there by car to Nova Scotia and points Canadian :) We also plan to go into Canada from point #19 which is the Niagara Falls area. |
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| I am not sure where May went, we had some fun along the way and will continue to move along our route to Maine. Don't forget to come visit us again! Kim |
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