June travels

 

 

 

Had a good time at the Rangers/KC Royals game at the "K".    Rangers won and we did not receive TOO many glares from the local fans.  Had a BBQ sandwich at the ballpark because you have to have BBQ in KC.  AND it was Friday night fireworks.  One more ballpark marked off the list. 

 

Spent some time in Independence, MO.  Harry Truman was not from Independence but he claimed it as his hometown.  We took a tour of the house where he and Bess lived after they were married.  The house was built by Bess' grandfather in the 1800s and he had some rather elegant touches added.  Harry and Bess were more down-to-earth and the things that belonged to them were just like the things is our homes when we were growing up.  On one hand, that was nice.  On the other hand, that meant we are historic relics.  Harry died in 1972, Bess in 1982.  The calendar is still on the kitchen wall from the month and year she died.  Also, because we have a "senior pass" and because this was a National Park, we got in free.  One more perk of being old.  We also had an ice cream sundae at the soda fountain where Harry had his first job.

 

 

The small town of Blue Springs where the RV park was located had some businesses with interesting names that kind of made me wonder: Frontier Justice; Warrior Training; Unity Village. 

 

Downtown Days in Lee's Summit was a bigger deal than we expected.  We came across a fire truck at the fire station that was the same age as Jim.  It was the only red truck there.  All the others were yellow.  That's just not right. 

 

John Denver sings "gold was just a windy Kansas wheat field" and I saw them on our way out of Kansas.  Also saw the "amber waves of grain" in Illinois. Mesmerizing.   As I believe I have mentioned before, I love farms.  Which reminds me, on our way across Kentucky, I noticed that the barns were painted black.  Found out that that was to increase the heat inside the barn and speed up the processing of tobacco. 

 

This campground in Texas is near some old, dear friends we will get to see while here.  Another good thing about being in Texas is that I knew the way to the airport when Jim had to fly to Chicago today. 

 This is Jim. When we arrived and after we had everything set up, I realized we were not going to have room to extend our front awning.  I called the office to see if we could move to a different site, but none were available, so the next morning a maintenance guy came with lopping shears and just wacked a bunch of branches out of the tree.  Now that's customer service!

And after six months of going to the Laundromat, I have decided to go ahead and get a washer and dryer for the RV.  Someone else's hair on our clothes, yeah, that's what pushed me over the edge.

 

Just want to give a shout out to the truck stop where we stopped for gas that had a really nice, clean, inexpensive SALAD BAR.  Wish that happened more often.  And I want to give a shout out to my beautiful bride of 43 years who celebrated a birthday in June.  We celebrated Jane's and Brian's (not pictured) birthday.