June 5-6, 2018 Mansfield to Joplin, Missouri

It has been in the 80's and not as humid as it has been. I am hoping we are escaping the humidity.

The Current river is down a couple feet and a bit clearer. But not clear enough for us to want to kayak it. Beautiful historic downtown Mansfield, Missouri. We are staying just out of town. 

 Beautiful historic downtown Mansfield, Missouri. We are staying just out of town. Some plants and flowers from the RV park we are staying in. We have a nice campsite at the Laura Ingalls Wilder RV park, just across the street from the museum. Trees, shade, space and a picnic table. The sign says Park you little house on our prairie.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's historic  home Rocky Ridge Farm. Below is the museum. After Laura died they kept the house exactly as she left it when she died in 1957 at 92 years old. and have been giving tours ever since. In the museum here is her office where she wrote all the Little house on the Prairie books.  Her most famous, Little house on the Prairie is about how her family moved to Kansas and lived on the prairie. I hadn't realized that all her books are true, they are her life. A bookshelf of her books translated into many languages, her glass washboard. I didn't even know they made glass washboards. And Pa's dear old fiddle- her fathers fiddle. 

The current masterpiece in progress.I am making a basket around a piece of birch bark from Wisconsin. The pond in the RV park tonight. 

We headed west again today. We drove by Springfield, Mo. It is in rolling green hills with oak trees. Rested in Mt Vernon, saw the sign for the Precious Moments Chapel. It is supposed to be over done with the cute little cartoon characters with the huge eyes. It sounds way too cute, cute enough to be stupid so I have to stop and see it, it is on our way, Ozarkland says Road Trip Calories Don't Count. They sell all kinds of candy and souvenirs, and Ha-Way is Hello in Quapaw. We are staying at the Downriver Casino on the Quapaw reservation. I thought this tanker was full of coffee. John says it is not, just an ad for the pilot coffee. Welcome to Missouri. The casino is in Oklahoma and the gas station and RV park are across the highway in Missouri. . .

We are staying at the Downstream RV park at the Downstream Casino. If you sign up for their  players card you get one night free in the RV park. We each got one and are getting 2 nights free. The RV park is a giant cement parking lot with no shade, but it has 50 amp hookups so we can run both AC units. Ok for free. We gambled some. I love this Fireball slot machine, I always win on it. I left the casino with $3 more than I fed into them, so I call that good.  More progress on the masterpiece today while we were driving. 

Today is the 12th anniversary of when we met. We got married common law by signing our taxes as married in 2011. We had a spiritual wedding ceremony on the Colorado River on Memorial day weekend 2011 on June 3. When we applied for medicare and my retiree health insurance they wanted paper proof that we are married so we used the Domestic Partnership agreement we signed so John could get on my company supplied health insurance, that was Jan 20, 2010. John says he will only remember one date. Since our first date was 06/06/06 or 666 he remembers that date and we celebrate them all then. We went out to dinner at the Red Hot and Blue BBQ. They played blues music and served hot BBQ,  On our way home we stopped at the Tri State Corner monument conveniently located on the casino grounds. The place where Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri meet. John has one foot in three states. 

Sunset tonight at the RV park. 

June 2-4, 2018 Columbia, Kentucky To Van Buren, Missouri

Another too hot and humid day. Checked out town, One kind of deli eating place, a general store/pizza joint and two churches. We went to the Civil War museum at the campground. Then read and worked on my basket.

Spanish bayonets, a type of yucca. Beards and Rose's General store in Columbia. We went in and he had a beard and she looked like Rose.  The sun behind the clouds at sunset looked kind of cartoony. The host gave me a big box of pecans from her brothers yard. He has 7 trees in his yard in Tennesse, she has way too many. I cracked 150 of them and got about 3/4 of a quart ziplock of nuts. Only 350 more to go. They go pretty fast with this fancy pecan cracker. 

Sunset tonight was behind lots of clouds over the Mississippi River. A strip sunset. We drove across the Ohio River into Illinois/ across the narrow tip near Cairo,  then over the Mississippi River into Missouri. On the Great River Road in Illinois, Southern Branch of the Lincoln Heritage Trail. Past the ad for Lambert's Cafe, Home of the Throwed Roll. They roll out carts of fresh rolls and throw them to who ever wants one. We had lunch there years ago.

Down John's street to the RV park. It was advertised at $25 for the site. Well it was $25 for the site, then another $12.50 person making it $50 so we went down the road to the Big Spring RV park for $32 a night. Here were are in our nice shaded spot on the river. We visited Big Spring in the Ozark National Riverway which had facilities built by the CCC

Big Spring in the Ozarks in Missouri is huge, one of the largest in the world. Around 286 billion gallons of water a day bubble up from under a dolomite cliff.  It is turquoise  from the dissolved minerals kind of like glacier melt. Really beautiful.

So beautiful I took too many photos of it. These two are where it bubbles up. 

John walking the trail along the run off from the spring. We had planned to kayak on the Current river, it usually crystal clear water fed from many springs like this but the big rain storm this last weekend turned it muddy brown. So we decided to pass. 

The CCC built most of the buildings in the park. Here are the dining hall and the visitors center. Last year there was a huge flood in this valley so the building are under repair still. 

The step on the front door broke and does not come out. I put a step stool under the door. I forgot and  tumbled out the door and beat myself up. Bangs and bruises and just a couple road rashes from the cement. My foot hurt the most so I elevated and wrapped medicinal meat from the freezer around it, since we don't have room for ice or frozen peas in the freezer. It feels better now 24 hours later. I will have to repair the nail polish!

Here is where I fell, it is about 3 1/2 feet from the bottom of the door to the ragged cement below. We had thought about kayaking the Current River. Usually it is crystal clear beautiful water, this is what it looks like today with the floods from upstream. We passed. 

Sunset tonight.

May 30-June, 1, 2018 Columbia, Kentucy

 After last nights rain it was 90's and VERY humid again.

It rained about 3 inches. The eye of the tropical storm ended up passing pretty close to us so lots of moisture and flooding. Amber waves of grain in western Kentucky.

The bus at Columbus/Belmont state park. Trees, grass, picnic table, space between units and full hookups. We are next to the Mississippi river, so on the Great River Road that runs along it, hibiscus bloom, signs for the park , a civil war soldier. I thought the wording on the no alcohol was pretty interesting. "A person is guilty of drinking alcoholic  beverages in a public place when he drinks alcoholic beverages in public." and a squirrel sitting on a civil war cannon from the fort that was here during the civil war. 

John with one of the big cannons. There was a cave in on the cliff and the cannon fell into the river, it was not found for 55 years. The confederates stretched a mile long chain across the Mississippi to stop the Union ships from passing.  Each link weights 20 lbs 5 oz.  The anchor was estimated at 2-6 tons. It did not work and the river eventually broke it. Here is part of it.

We are on part of the Trail of Tears. In the 1830's the federal government forcibly removed approximately 16,000, 21 Muscogee(Creek), 9,000 Choctaw, 6,000 Chickasaw and 4,000 Seminole from their ancestral homes in the southeastern United States and walked them with heavy losses to Oklahoma to a new reservation. Overlook to the Mississippi River from the park.

 Sunset over the Mississippi. I am done adding the pine needles now I need to finish up with the beads, stitching behind the beads and sewing leather on the bottom.

The low point of Kentucky is kind of an island of the Mississippi. We had to drive into Tennessee , then up a narrow isthmus to the island. The low point is marked with the red star. Here is John at the lowpoint of Kentuky. He once again waded through waist deep plants, ticks, snakes and poison ivy to get to it.  I stood on the road and took his photo.

We drove into Tennessee, along the Great River Road  and over the Original Route of the Trail of Tears to get to the low point. On the way back we went to Fulton, Ky, the Banana Capital of the World. In 1880 the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad was the first to develop refrigerated cars. Fulton was home to a large railroad facility and had the only ice house on the route north to Chicago.  So it became the  redistribution point for bananas from south America into North America for the United Fruit  Co, now Chiquita. At one point over 70% f the bananas consumed in the United states passed through Fulton. We were looking for a statue of giant banana or something so we went to the Chamber of Commerce. There is not statue or even a sign about being the banana capital. But they gave us each free banana festival T-shirts. The festival is in the fall complete with a Miss Banana pageant, Banana Ball, Banana fashion show, Banana bake off, banana 5K, banana brawl,  banana cabana, parade, carnival and greased pig race. They make a one ton banana pudding -the worlds largest-that after traveling in the parade they give away free to hungry festival attendees. Beautiful historic downtown Fulton. 

A CCC built shelter at the park we are camped in. The park is the site of a Civil War Battle and Fort. Here are some of the Confederate earthworks to protect the fort here. 

A raven in sunset tonight. The ground sparkles with fireflies. We have been seeing them off and on since mid March. A couple artistic grave stones from the Columbus cemetary across the street. Many graves dating from the 1880's. 

Sunset tonight. No clouds.