Last day in KC

Today was a day of catching up with friends and more family.  We had lunch with Mindy and Rachel at Gordon Biersch.  

Here's what happens when you tell Rachel and Brad to cheese for the camera.

Mindy and me

Oh wait, I need to fix my hair...

And Mindy needs to fix hers...

This will have to do...

Then Lee Ann and Roger and the girls met us back at the RV to visit.

Lora, Roger, and Budger

Roger and Lydia

Lee Ann and me

Then this evening we ran back up to Mom's to see her one last time, and also to see Kendall and Grace, who needed to come by and pick up their kitty.

Little cutie!

We had decided to grab some pizza for dinner, and Kendall suggested a place called Pie 5, which is just down the road from Mom.  Lee Ann and Roger were just telling us about it this afternoon.  You build your pizza kind of "Subway sandwich" style, picking out your crust, cheeses, and toppings, and they put it on a little conveyor belt in the oven, and it's done in 5 minutes.

And then when Kendall said their regional special is Jack Stack BBQ pizza, I knew I had to try it... Yummy!!

It's been a busy whirlwind few days, but we got to catch up with a lot of people.

We're hitting the road super early in the morning, because we're doing a longer drive than normal... Gotta get out west!!  We've both done about half our pack-up-and-go chores already, so we can be quick in the morning, and get the heck out of Dodge... Or toward Dodge, actually.

Kansas City, Here We Come!! Rutlader Outpost RV Park, Louisburg KS

We arrived at our weekend stop, which is in Louisburg KS, just south of Overland Park, where most of the family is, just after noon on Friday.  We stayed here before, at Christmastime last year, so everything is familiar.  It's not a bad location, a straight shot south of my mom's place about 20 miles.

Our route took us across the top of Missouri, then southwest into Kansas City, and then we had to get to the south side.  This was basically our route, except we didn't drive through downtown KC on 35.  That would be crazy!  Brad would never speak to me again, and I kind of like talking to him.  We took 435 around, which makes way more sense.

Friday afternoon I met up with a high school friend, Greg Gorman, who happened to be in town visiting family, too, this weekend.  I was going to say "old friend" but we're not old!!  Pretty sure we look just the same as in high school.  We did a little catching up and some reminiscing about the gang we ran with at Oak Park, coming to the conclusion that we were really kind of geeky back then.  Ha!

Afterwards I went over to Mom's, where we decided some Jose Peppers was in order.  I got to meet Kendall and Todd's cat, Lady, who Mom is watching while they're out of town this weekend.

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Saturday was family time over at David and Wendy's.  So glad Candace could make it over from St Louis so we could all take turns passing Mackenzie around!  I was meeting Mackenzie for the first time.

She did play by herself a little bit.

Just hanging out...

Asher had a good time entertaining us all.

David grilled up some yummy burgers, and the other guys did great supervising.

Brad, Doug, Cody, and David.

Lots of good food... Wendy and David provided the burgers, and the rest of us provided the salads... Potato salad, layered pea salad, and veggie-vinegar salad, plus chips.

And some mini-cakes to celebrate July birthdays for Brad, Doug, Mom... And a congratulations and farewell from the KC area to Kristen who is taking on a new job and adventure.  The cakes were wonderful, and the names were almost as good.... Almond cake, raspberry lemon, chocolate butter cream, pink champagne, red velvet, and chocolate peanut butter.

And a few posed pics.

Me, with brother Doug and sister Wendy.

And with our favorite people. Plus Toby.

Me, Brad, Myong, Doug, David, and Wendy.  My brother is such a dork.

My 4 nieces who were there today.

Tiffany, Kristen, Candace, and McLain

Lots of fun and conversation and laughs and eating and just catching up.

One more day in KC, with 2 or 3 get-togethers planned tomorrow.

Sunset from our park tonight.

Shoemakers RV Park, Bevier MO

Last stop before Kansas City!!

We had a pretty easy drive today.  The only potential snag was when we were navigating around Ottumwa IA, and suddenly had hundreds and hundreds of RVs and busses and vehicles pulling trailers coming towards us.  Took me awhile to figure it out, then I remembered... RAGBRAI, which stands for Register's (Iowa newspaper) Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.  These were all the support vehicles.  Good thing we like to travel early in the day, because 10,000+ bicycles would be coming through later in the day.  This is a link you can copy and paste if you'd like to read up on it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGBRAI

We got to our park shortly after noon today, and were so surprised when we pulled in to see this fifth wheel parked just a few places down from our assigned spot.

This is ours.

We've never seen one that looked exactly like ours!  Turns out, the owner is the woman who was working in the registration office.  She bought hers last summer too, although she hasn't made any interior changes to hers.  On closer inspection, hers is slightly different, as it it one year newer, has one more slide-out, and is about 4 feet longer.  So fun to see, though!

We got to scratch off another state today.  Now it looks like we don't like Mississippi OR Illinois, but our travel routes just haven't worked out to stop over in either of those states... I only scratch them off if we park there overnight.  We'll pick them up sometime.

I've been across Missouri on this highway (US 36) many times, as it's a divided 4-lane, and I prefer it to driving on I-70, but haven't stopped to enjoy many of the historic places.  Just a stone's throw from our park:

Marceline MO, boyhood home of Walt Disney.  The museum there is supposed to be pretty cool.

Hamilton MO, boyhood home of James Cash Penney, founder of J C Penney.

Hannibal MO, boyhood home of Mark Twain (I HAVE been there before, and visited the sites).

Laclede MO, site of General Pershing's boyhood home.

We're pooped from so many travel days in a row, though, and are just hanging out and vegging this afternoon and tonight.

Amana Colonies RV Park

We set out from Wisconsin this morning, and arrived in Iowa this afternoon.  We took a slight detour along the way to visit a place we've both been wanting to see... The Field of Dreams.  So cool!

It was really interesting.  No signs along the highway advertise it.  This sign is just right in front of the farm.  There is no admission charge, although I think they do pretty well selling souvenirs.  Nearly every person was leaving with a t-shirt.  You're welcome to take pictures all over, play catch with your kids on the field, wander into the corn field... You just can't go into the house, because people still live there.

When the movie was made and the field carved out, left field was actually on the neighbors' farm.  When filming finished, the neighbors turned their portion back to farmland, but only for a year.  Then they carved out the left field again.  I'm sure there was a lot of pressure from the public to restore the whole field!  At one time, there were two entrances to the field, one from each farm.  Eventually, the family with the house and the rest of the field bought the neighbors' land, and then the whole farm sold in 2011.

A few pics around the field.

Once we left there, it was about another hour and a half to the Amana Colonies, where we are staying tonight.  This place is a little more populated than any of the recent places we've been.

Nobody right close to us, though, so that's good.

The Amana colonies were established by German immigrants who had left Germany and originally settled near Buffalo NY.  Eventually they needed more land, and moved west to Iowa, in 1855.  There are 7 different colonies. The land for the last village was purchased specifically for its access to the railroad.  The Amana colonies are the originators of Amana appliances, and now there is a huge Whirlpool plant on the site by the railroad.

The original Amana colony residents lived a communal life, and were pretty self-sufficient.  They were (and are still) well known for their crafts, food, wine, and brews.  During the depression they gave up their communal ways, as they could see they were losing residents, especially the young people.  They seem like the Amish at first, because they were a religious community, but the Amanas are fully into technology and the 21st century.

At the RV park, we were told that church services are still held as they always have, with women and children sitting on one side, and men on the other, although the young people of the community are pushing to change that.  They hold one service in German, and another in English.

We did a little wandering around in town, and poked into a few shops, but we're pretty beat, having traveled for 3 days in a row, with two more to go.  We're just going to enjoy the peacefulness of the RV park for the rest of the evening.

Here's some pictures of our wandering around town.  Love the architecture!

Could've seen Erma Bombeck if we'd gotten here sooner!

Pretty flowers all over!

Possibly could have bought an old-school toy for a certain little boy in this toy store.

A town with a sense of humor.

More beautiful buildings.

Our route for today:

Ooh, and we got to scratch off another new state!

One more stop in Missouri tomorrow night, before arriving in the KC area on Friday!