We Still Like Ike

Abilene, Kansas, boyhood home of Dwight David Eisenhower and site of his Presidential Library, Museum and Final Resting Place.

We go over to the chapel that contains his and Mamie's tomb.

I am very touched.

The Chapel where he rests.

He was a great man. When I was in third grade I went over to the neighbor's and watched the Republican National Convention on their TV. We got our first TV about 4 years later.

I was a great Ike fan and still am. No president is perfect and he did some things I cannot agree with (But few knew how evil the CIA was/is) and there were things he did that I was sorry Congress watered down. He was a moderate who was courted by the Democrats and the Republicans before he decided to run as a Republican. At the end of his two terms he was still very popular and would have won a third term if it had been allowed. Walter Lippmann said Eisenhower would have won even if he were dead.

William imitates the general.

Ike's boyhood home.

We both enjoyed the museum, though we tended to skip around each other. William passed me in the Mamie section and I passed him in the WWII section, but we finished about the same time. We both like this quote among many. He left many good quotes.

When we were looking at a display about Kansas in the Library, we saw a display about the rock fences. In the West when there were rock fences, they were the traditional type where the farmer keeps stacking up rocks from the field along the edge and eventually has a fence. These rock fences are different. Where streams have cut in and made bluffs you see sandstone that was easily cut into blocks. Without much source of wood for fence posts, the farmers used sandstone blocks for fence posts and strung barbed wire between the posts. Many posts still stand along 70. A few were used along the edge of a road at a rest stop.
These were buried a bit deeper than they were originally, but you can still see where the wire cut in.

Before we get to the Goodland KOA, our stop for the night we see snow along the edge of the road.

The man who owns the KOA said it snowed here just a few days ago.