Kansas...a different view

While we were in Boot Hill Saloon the piano player and the bartender struck up a conversation with us and when they found out what we are doing with the RV and all they told us we needed to go to Garden City, they said it had a wonderful zoo and to top it off it was free, and if it's free it's for me! So we packed up the clan and drove to Garden City.

We passed thru Spearville Kansas, this region in Kansas is considered to be the most windy in the United States, which explains the high interest in developing additional wind power in the and Spearville  Kansas has long been known as the Home of Windmills, a designation that dates from the days of small windmills used to pump ground water for irrigation and livestock. This tradition now has a new dimension  with the arrival of the Spearville Wind Energy Facility and the wind turbines, when fully extended, the tower and vertical blade reach a maximum height of 391 feet above the ground. They are awesome to watch and so graceful!

WINDMILLS

We went to the zoo the next day and it was wonderful and they had animals Pierre and had never seen before! Lots critical endangered animals...totally awesomeness! Then we drove around and checked out a few museums and then a local grassland park. Kansas has LOTS of grasslands.
Surprisingly they have a lot of feedlots in this area also, they are huge facilities that house thousands of cattle being fattened up for the kill. The stench is horrible! Nasty business!
We are headed back to Panama City, yes we are...the lyrics to the Eagles song, Hotel California keeps going thru my head ....you know the one....you can check any time want, but can't ever leave!....that's Panama City folks. I'm trying to be optimistic...

Dodge City, Kansas

Oh my gosh...what can I say about all that is going on around here in Junction City, Kansas, we have been, going.going,going...making lots of memories!
Pierre and I have been sailing on a boat for most of these little peeps lives, so we have been enjoying getting to know them! But as with all good things this is quickly coming to a close, we are getting things ready to ship out. The Owls Nest Campground here in Junction City has been a nice campground, the people are so nice and helpful and it is well kept up, clean and very quiet.
We decided to head to Dodge City when we leave here, yeehaw! Lots of history packed in a small space there!  "Kansas has but one Dodge City, with a broad expanse of territory sufficiently vast for an empire; we have only room for one Dodge City; Dodge, a synonym for all that is wild, reckless, and violent; Hell on the Plains."
-- A Kansas Newspaper in the 1870's
Famous for its rich history as a frontier cowtown, it offers up a wide array of legends, lore and history to travelers in western Kansas and Dodge City had a reputation for being the most wicked town in the Old West.
Fort Mann was actually the first settlement of non-indigenous people in this area, not Dodge City. It was Fort Mann that later became Dodge City. Fort Mann was built by civilians in 1847 to provide protection for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, but it collapsed in 1848 after Indians attacked it.
In 1850, the U.S. Army arrived to provide protection and they constructed Fort Atkinson on the old Fort Mann site. In 1853 the Army abandoned Fort Atkinson because they wanted to establish military forces further north. Early in 1865, the Indian Wars in the West began heating up, and the army returned and reconstructed Fort Dodge to assist in providing protection on the Santa Fe Trail.
   The town of Dodge City can trace its origins to 1871 when rancher Henry J. Sitler built a sod house west of Fort Dodge to oversee his cattle operations it was conveniently located near the Santa Fe Trail and Arkansas River, and Sitler's house quickly became a stopping point for travelers. In 1872, George M. Hoover established the first bar in a tent to serve thirsty soldiers from Dodge City and when the railroad arrived in September they found a town ready and waiting for business. The early settlers in Dodge City traded in buffalo bones and hides, but with the arrival of the railroad, Dodge City became involved in the cattle trade and soon became a boomtown, with thousands of cattle passing annually through its stockyards. The peak years of the cattle trade in Dodge City were from 1883 to 1884, and during that time the town grew tremendously, and no town could match its reputation as a true frontier settlement of the Old West. Dodge City had more famous (and infamous) gunfighters working at one time or another than any other town in the West, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and Big Nose Kate, just to name a few,  it also boasted the usual array of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels, including the famous Long Branch Saloon where Belle Starr worked. For a time Dodge City even had a bullfighting ring where Mexican bullfighters would put on a show with specially chosen longhorn bulls.
Today Meat packing is the primary industry in Dodge City. Cargill Meat Solutions and National Beefboth operate large facilities in the city. The city also hosts farm implement manufacturing and serves as a supply center for area agriculture. Livestock-raising is a major activity while wheat and sorghum are the area's main crops. In addition, a local tourism industry, including a casino resort, has developed to capitalize on Dodge City's history as an Old West cowtown. 

We ARE in Kansas...Toto

Well folks we are in Kansas, Junction City, Kansas...
Kansas is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area.The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind", although this was probably not the term's original meaning. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.
Kansas was first settled by European Americans in 1812, in what is the now Bonner Springs, Kansas, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. Kansas entered the Union as a free state so after the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly when immigrants turned the prairie into farmland.
Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. There is a lot of flat land and some rolling type hills around here, Junction City founded in 1857 is located in the heart of Kansas, Junction City sprang up around Fort Riley, an active duty post known as the birthplace of the 7th Cavalry. Named for its location at the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hills rivers and the junctions of of three railroads, the Kansas Pacific (going east-west); the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas (going south); and the Junction City and Fort Kearney (going north). Junction City is surrounded by history...a lot of the building here show it! We have been having loads of fun spending time with the grandkids....there is a lot of spoiling going on round here!
                                                                 

Elizabeth 

Sammy

   

Missouri

We arrived in St Louis Missouri around 4pm and we stayed in a RV park called Sunset RV Park, it is kinda off the beaten path, and believe me when I tell you...it is in the middle of nowhere! When we drove to it, Pierre and were looking at each other..a little worried...but it turned to be a hidden gem! We took the cats out for a short walk, but they were not feeling it's. Minx is sick with the upper respiratory, so I have been giving her Navi's medicine, as soon as we get to Jordan's and Kristen's house and get Espirt settled in, I am going to take her to a vet!
I did a little studying on the state of Missouri and here is what I found! Missouri is in the Midwestern region of the United States, and in the south of Missouri are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. The Mississippi River forms the eastern border of the state. When the French established Louisiana, a part of New France, they founded St. Louis in 1764. After a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South, including enslaved African Americans, rushed into the new Missouri Territory. Many from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee settled in Mid-Missouri. Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States, as memorialized by the Gateway Arch. The Pony Express, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, and California Trail all began in Missouri. Fun fact about the pony express, it only lasted for about 19 months, but it was the catalyst that launched the high speed mail, the Pony Express didn’t come cheap so regular peeps never used it, the service was mainly used to deliver newspaper reports, government dispatches and business documents, most of which were printed on tissue-thin paper to keep costs down. Despite operating for only 19 months, its riders had successfully delivered some 35,000 pieces of mail and traveled more than half a million miles across the American frontier.
Missouri's culture blends elements from the Midwestern and Southern United States. The musical styles of ragtime, Kansas City jazz, and St. Louis Blues, developed in Missouri. The Kansas City-style barbecue is well known and St. Louis is also home to Anheuser-Busch is the largest beer producers in the world. U.S. President Harry S. Truman is from Missouri as well as Mark Twain, and Walt Disney. Missouri has been called the "Mother of the West" and the "Cave State," however, Missouri's most famous nickname is the "Show Me State. After Missouri we headed for Kansas, Fort Riley to be exact, it is about 2hours west of Kansas City!  It was a long a drive but all four of us made it intact and we are currently holed up at a small RV park called Owls Neat Campground! We will be here for a few weeks to help our daughter! I'll keep everyone abreast of all the cool things to see in Junction City Kansas..LOL

Onward Ho

We left Panama City at 11:41, after the post office didn't deliver our new GPS, oh well.... hopefully we won't get lost, or better yet hopefully we will!...We are planning to make it to Montgomery Alabama and stop there for the night! Montgomery is the capital of the state of Alabama and is the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for Richard Montgomery, it is located on the Alabama River, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. It is the second-largest city in Alabama, after Birmingham, and the 103rd largest in the United States. We stayed at a campsite on the outskirts near the highway we need to take in the morning, Awesome....we are on the way to  Memphis!

Here is a little bit about Memphis, Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the State of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers. Memphis is famous for the influential strains of blues, soul and rock 'n' roll that originated there. Elvis Presley, B.B. King and Johnny Cash recorded albums at the legendary Sun Studio.  Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion, Beale Street, Arcade Restaurant, which was a favorite of Elvis, are just a few things to see in Memphis. The Yellow Fever nearly wiped out Memphis' population in the 1870's.

Memphis is the largest city in the state of Tennessee, the largest city on the Mississippi River, the third largest in the Southeastern United States, and the 20th largest in the United States. Navi turned out to be the navigator I thought he would be, he did really well today in the RV, he's going to one traveling cat! We stayed the night in the parking lot of a Walmart about an hour outside of Memphis, this will be a first for us...dry camping! Lol
Well after some trouble with the car and the refrigerator we had to stay a couple of days in Memphis, we found a wonderful camping spot, called Tom Sawyer RV park we got a spot right on the river and it had been so much fun watching the tugs in tow go by! After we fixed everything we had an afternoon to see a few things close by! We went downtown to Beale Street It's one of the most famous entertainment streets in America, bringing Memphis' blues and world famous barbecue!

But Beale Street began more than 100 years ago as one of the few places African Americans could shop, then called the Jim Crow South because blacks couldn't go up on Main Street or other areas.

As the business district and number of Black businesses grew over the years, so did the energy on Beale Street, especially after dark. Music brought a who's who list of names to Beale--- B.B. King. Elvis. W.C. Handy, Sam Phillips, Al Green, Ike and Tina Turner and Johnny Cash during the 20th century.
As a major African American street it took center stage during the Civil Rights era.
Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Beale, the last three big moments in his life were on Beale.
Today  Beale Street is one of the largest revenue-grossing attractions in the state of Tennessee, and the sights and sounds around this world-famous street help its story live on.
There is also a huge Bass Pro Shop in the shape of a pyramid right on the river, so of course we had to go there, it is one of the most dynamic and immersive retail experiences ever! It’s more than a store; it’s an adventure! In addition to an incredible assortment of fishing, boating, hunting and outdoor gear, this store includes a 103-room hotel with treehouse cabins, called Big Cypress Lodge, they also have over 600,000 gallons of water all over the store,   filled with over 1,800 fish! They made it look like a cypress swamp with alligator pools and duck aviaries. You can also take the elevator to the the top of the pyramid, which is 32 stories, for a breathtaking view of downtown Memphis! It was fun and kinda scary because the floor of the observance deck was glass!

Tomorrow its on to St Louis!

 These tree house at the Tom Sawyer RV Park were made by the "Tree House Master" the ones that are on TV...they were so neat!

River boat

Tug and tow

Onward ho!

Count down has begun

Pierre and I drove to Atlanta last weekend to pick up a new kitten, we have been waiting for 6 months to get him and we were very excited to meet our new baby! He is a sorrel or cinnamon Abyssinian. Our very first cat was a Abby, Tokyo Joe was with us for 12 years and we loved him very much, that is when we fell in love with the breed, they are very loyal, loving and stay kitten like for their whole lives. Here is a little tidbit about the Abby breed .
Abby's are named  after Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia), the empire from which they were first thought to have originated; more recent research now places their origins somewhere nearer the Egyptian coast. Abyssinians are a slender, fine-boned, medium-sized cat. They have alert, and relatively large pointed ears. Abyssinians are claimed to be one of the oldest known breeds and there continues to be speculation and controversy concerning this history, the claim is that the sacred cats pictured on ancient Egyptian artifacts and hieroglyphics must have been Abyssinian cats and that is why it is suggested that this breed is the oldest in existence. In appearance, Abyssinians resemble the paintings and sculptures of ancient Egyptian cats which portray an elegant feline with a muscular body, beautiful arched neck, large ears and almond shaped eyes. Abby's today still retain the jungle look of felis lybica, the African wildcat ancestor of all domestic cats.The first Abyssinians to be imported to North America from England arrived in the early 1900s, and are noted to be one of the most popular breeds today!

We think he will do fine in the RV being a kitten, Minx is slowly warming to him, she has started playing with him and they take turns chasing each other. But mousers they are not, I was cleaning the bathroom the other day and with both cats, being the helpers that they are, were in there with me when I looked up and a mouse walked by the bathroom door and out into the living room. Minx looked at it then at me and then she laid down! For two days we have chased that silly mouse from room to room, trying to get it out of the house, with both of the cats watching us, secretly laughing at us behind our backs! We finally cornered it in the closet and Pierre took it outside! I sure hope the little one becomes a better mouser, I do not mind the little creatures, but not in my house!
We are getting ready to leave on the trip in about 10 days so we are scrambling to get the last things done and get the RV packed up! Pierre dropped the new Garmin and busted it, so it had to go back to Garmin and they are sending us a new one, then we are waiting on a piece for the engine, hopefully they both will come in next week and we can get gone on Monday the 16th. We are heading to Kansas to visit Kristin, Jordan and the grandkids, Jordan's has to go away for 10 days and I want to be able to be there to help Kristin!

RV versus Sailboat

I have to admit I WAS VERY nervous about this RVing thing...I have alway traveled by sailboat and traveling on land is something alot different, but I love different...so I tried to be optimistic. When we left this last time we were going to be gone for about 2 month, but it was cut short due to the plumbing fiasco...we ended up only being gone for 10 days, but...I think I am going to love RV life.....of course I love to travel..see new thing and I meet new peeps, but traveling in an RV is ALOT different....so I have  been coming up with things that are the same and things that are different about traveling on a sailboat and traveling by RV

The same thing about them is they both move and you alway have your home with you, your very own bed, you're own sheets, towels, dishes and you know where all your stuff is! You can travel to different places in the comfort of your own home. That’s most of the of the appeal—getting to visit new places while carrying your home with you. 

But that's about all they have in common, of course the sailboat can only travel by sea and the RV by land. 

When you step out of the boat..if you are not at a dock...you get wet and you could drown...when you step out of an RV you land on solid ground, so you don't drown...that is a thumbs up for the RV! 

When we sailed and anchored up for a time or stayed at a dock...getting from one place to another was hard on the feet or expensive, you walked, biked or took a taxi. 

With the RV we pull a small car behind us so when we dock, we have transportation, it is a lot more fun to be able to see more of what is around....that is a thumbs up for the RV!

With the RV we can choose how far we want to travel in a day and we can choose when we want to stop. That does not happen in a sailboat, you are at the mercy of the wind and the weather, on the sailboat, your day is a full 24hrs...or longer..it depends on things you can not control...with the RV If we start to feel the itch to move earlier than anticipated, we start up the motor and move, regardless of the weather or the wind.

When you live on a sailboat weather is a major concern, we do not worry about adverse weather in the RV. We were very concerned when our boat was at anchor and we were ashore if the weather deteriorated or changed, inclement weather does not bother us in the RV, no leaky hatches, no bouncing or swinging with the wind and the waves.

Maintenance is required, of course, in an RV, but the cost is lower, and getting parts is so much easier!
That is just a few things that I thought about when we were gone. I did think up quite a few more, but didn't want to bore my readers (you are out there..right)...but

All in all, we are still having fun and that folks.... is what life is all about!