Goodland Kansas to Boulder Colorado

The Goodland KOA was five star with no one there.

An artist is painting giant copies of Van Gogh's sunflower pictures in different countries that grow lots of sunflowers.
They had a nice High Prairie Museum in Goodland. This old helicopter really did not work.

Here we are in Boulder.

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.

Illinois to Kansas

We leave Litchfield after the morning thunderstorm has let up by 9AM. We enjoyed our stay at Aunt Alice's house.

Being along the Eisenhower Highway system
reminds us that the Eisenhower Presidential library and museum are in Abilene Kansas. We will visit the Museum in the morning. The last Republican I whole heartedly endorsed. Though during the Bush years I grew nostalgic for Nixon.

We push on to an RV park close to Abilene. This RV park, like many we have stayed at on this trip, has seen better days.

Up to Springfield

The Lincoln Presidential Library Museum in Springfield beckons. We arrive at Ruthie's and had a nice visit while we waited for Mary Kay and Rich.
The Museum is fabulous and the Team of Rivals section had information that we were not familiar with. I bought the book for us.

William and I visit with the Lincoln family.

us and the young Lincoln

The three cousins, Ruthie engineered the Springfield visit. She is a museum docent.

the Lincoln Home

Ariston Party Number Two

Today we took Aunt Alice and family out to the Ariston for their famous Sunday Brunch Buffet.

Lazy Days in Illinois

We have been having a lovely time here in Litchfield. We are staying with Aunt Alice, Dad's younger brother's widow, a most gracious hostess. Because Ted was quite a bit younger than Dad and Alice married quite young, she is only 10 years older than me.

We had a lovely family get together of the Schneider side.

Cousin Sue and her son Ben

Scott came up from Florida. He comes up every once in a while. He cooked a huge Cuban style dinner.

A big motivation in coming was to visit mom's sister. At soon to be 97, she is the last remaining of the Whitlock brothers and sisters. She is in a large assisted living right now. She gets around quite well with her walker and has no major health problems, just a little short term forgetfulness. A drive with Ruth and cousin Patty out to the country had to take in the former Crabtree one room school house
where she taught for many years and the farm where Cousin Frank and his wife Patty live now.

Cousin Mary Kay was planning a gathering to visit Aunt Ruth this same weekend. So we pulled cousins out of the woodwork and had a gathering of 16, minus a few spouses who were busy and a few cousins out of state.
The venue was Aunt Ruth's favorite restaurant, the Ariston, in business on route 66 since 1924.

Today we are going to take Aunt Alice, cousins Janet and Sue out to lunch at the Ariston. It is the place to go in Litchfield.

Mammoth Cave to Illinois

Mammoth Cave to Indiana 4/11/11

We got up pretty early this AM and decided to go on an 845 cave tour. We had seen the dry part of the cave on our historic cave tour yesterday, so today we did a wet part.

The Frozen Niagara tour is short but has a lot to see and has an interesting history.

Mammoth Cave had been a private operation for over 100 years by 1920 when an enterprising person described as an oil man, realized that the cave tours were covering land not owned by the historic tour operators. He managed to surreptitiously map the caverns and bought up adjoining land. He then threw dynamite down a sink hole and blasted a new hole into the caverns. After some exploration he set up a new entrance and built a new hotel and put up billboards calling himself the New Mammoth Cave.

It is amazing to think of people paying the equivalent of $60/person in 1924 to take really dangerous tours. Now there are steel guard rails and steel stairs. Then, forget guard rails, rickety wooden stairs and ladders were what you got for you and your children. People took more chances. And of course the risks you took were your own responsibility. Sort of like skiing now days.

We saw a lot of stalactites, stalagmites, columns and different types of flowstone. We looked into the bottomless pit and also saw the tiny Crystal Lake where people used to climb down to on wooden ladders and ride around in on a tiny boat. The Frozen Niagara was a spectacular tour for little effort.

The weather report was for rain to start at noon so we decide not to camp in Mammoth. It is a pretty campground but has no electricity. We drive on through Kentucky on Scenic route 70.

The idea is to camp at Lincoln State Park in Indiana. There is a historic farm in the area where Lincoln lived from age 7 until he left home. Too rainy to visit today, but little chance of rain tomorrow. At least we have electricity here in this picaresque campground. We could always go to Holiday Village in the town of Santa Claus on the other side of the intersection. Probably not.

Lincoln's Boyhood 4/12/2011

The weather was nice today and we spent the day going around to the various sights around Lincoln State Park that celebrate the boyhood Lincoln spent in Indiana.

In 1816 when Lincoln was 7 his family moved here to a 160 acre claim near Little Pigeon Creek. We visited the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial including the visitor center museum and movie and the Living Historical Farm. The farm had just opened up for the season and was very enjoyable.

We walked around the Col Jones Home. The Col owned a general store where Lincoln worked. It is still closed. The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Plaza was quite impressive.

We walked around the Little Pigeon Primitive Baptist church where Lincoln's sister and her husband are buried. While I fixed lunch William walked up to see Nancy Hanks, Lincoln's mother, grave site.

Lincoln stayed here 14 years. We are camped in Lincoln State Park for 2 nights. We keep changing sites as the RV sites are very uneven. This place is probably packed with people in the summer time.

But it could use a bit of TLC and grader work to level these sites. They offer water and electricity implying that these sites are for RV's. But they are crooked and sloping so it is hard to even roughly level our RV. But we have a nice view of the lake where we are now.

The lake and a ranger cabin, now used for boat rentals, were a CCC project. Reminders from state to state of all the work the young men of the CCC and WPA did in the 30's to fix up our national infrastructure.

New Harmony Indiana 4/13/2011

Just outside Cynthiana, Indiana, I spotted a small clump of headstones on top of a knoll with a large pile of slash next to it piled for burning. No road to this small pioneer cemetery and now no trees to shade the graves. Just cornfields right up to the stones.

As we head west William looks for sights to see along the way. And he picks out New Harmony, Indiana.

They are having Heritage Week, now stamped on my hand. We start at the visitor center for an orientation by a docent and a film. The town is gearing up for their bicentennial in 2014.

In the early 1800's a group broke off from the Lutheran church in Germany and their leader Rapp preached that the end times were near and they should live and work together. They first went to Harmony, Pennsylvania. But they needed more land so they bought 20,000 acres along the Wabash river in a place they called New Harmony. In a few years of hard work they transformed a dense forest into a prosperous town with many industries and surrounding farmlands growing grains, hemp, orchards and vineyards. They exported much of their goods and decided to go back to Harmony, Pennsylvania so their distribution would be better. The sect gradually died off after they espoused celibacy. Like the Shakers.

The town was sold to Owen who wanted to promote scientific study and education. Although he only lasted a few years the people he imported went on to found the Smithsonian Institute.

The town is considered a place where people come to seek spirituality and they have a famous roofless church.The grandparents fountain with William

We have a bit of time to go around to a few of the craftspeople. We see redware pottery making, soap making, rope making, felting and bee keeping and then it is time to leave.

We head out of town and cross the bridge to Illinois. It is a toll bridge, one dollar toll. I think they should pay us to drive on it. It looks to be in terrible shape as the pavement is rutted and the whole thing is covered with rust.

We spent last night in a state park in Illinois at Carlyle Lake. Now we are at Aunt Alice's. She has great internet in her new house.

Mammoth Cave

Yesterday we saw many red bud by the road. Today we saw tons of dogwood. We are not staying in the campground at Mammoth Cave even though it is much prettier than where we are. One word, electricity.

Diamond Caverns RV Resort says it is associated with Thousand Trails. Thousand Trails has come down a bit. The pool is green. They have stacked large rocks on some of the picnic tables to try to fix the warping. The hot water is slow and the drains back up fast. The wifi is only available in the "clubhouse" I am sitting at a ratty desk with major damage to the wall board. The exercise equipment is a couple of exercise bikes. I've seen better at yard sales. The Sauna is permanently locked and the spa has been broken for 3 years. Definitely downhill.

We went to Mammoth Cave this AM and went on the Historic Tour. It says moderate but I found it pretty strenuous at times.
Total Stairs 440 and a lot of them are straight up out of the bottom. 2 hours, 2 miles. We entered by the natural old entrance and saw the old mining areas. The bat guano was mined to make saltpeter in the 1800's for black powder manufacture and the Indians in ancient times mined the gypsum off the walls for unknown reasons. The narrow and low passages were not too bad. I got the most breathless climbing those stairs back up.

Great Smoky Mountains and beyond

Great Smoky Mountains 4/5/2011
Snow is spitting down as we leave Mama Gerties RV Park. We see lots of storm damage from high winds and a horrible storm I slept through last night. I have William's cold and was exhausted from all the walking, so I slept through lightning that made William nervous. He said he was wondering what would happen if a lightening strike hit the RV.
Signs are blown over and trees are broken. Looks like in some places the road was just cleared off.
William sees signs of old log skidding on the hillsides so we stop to look.
Since we will be boondocking the next few nights, we want to have plenty of gas. In the gas station window there is a sign for Hot Boiled Peanuts. You dip them out of a crock pot. Your choice of original or Cajun. So I choose Cajun.
At lunch I offer the peanuts with a sandwich. William does not like them. Says they are mushy. Yes, they are soft, but I like them. They make a great treat with a beer later.
Cut and run was the way trees were stripped out of the Appalachian Mountains. “You hardly left a tree of any size standing and all the little 'uns was tore down.” Spruce, Hemlock, Chestnut and Oak all were cut down. Any chestnuts left died off of an imported disease. 85% of the land that became the park was owned by timber companies and had been clear cut.
In the 30's there were many CCC camps here, and you can see all the stone work they did on the road.
In June this area must be lovely with the Rhododendrons in bloom and all the trees leafed out. What we loose in scenery we gain in fewer tourists. It would be even quieter, if this were not spring break for some elementary schools.
There is a lot of water here, and I don't think it all came from the storm last night. William is unimpressed by the Appalachian Mountains. We discuss the difference in age between the Rockies and Sierras and these ancient mountains worn down to what look to us like rounded hills.
Cades Cove 4/6/11
We camped in Cades Cove Campground in the Great Smokies National Park. We are boon docking with no electricity and no phone or internet.
Our main goal today is to do the Cades Cove Tour. This is a combo driving and walking tour of some of the old homes and churches. It seemed crowded enough today. We had trouble finding a parking place at some of the stops. I can't imagine how it is in the summer when it takes 4 hours to just drive the 11 mile route, let alone stop and park and look at anything.
Early settlers chose this land because it was flat. They could grow crops on the flat fields, corn and wheat. They planted gardens and harvested the bounty of the forests. Each family gathered 20-30 bushels of chestnuts just for their own use. If they gathered more, they would sell them in town. Each family had pigs for smoked meat. They ate venison and bear meat for fresh meat. They grew their own cotton and sheep for wool for homespun cloth. They raised cattle on the flat clear land on top of the mountains and also had milk cows.

William tried grinding sorghum cane for juice to make syrup.

The old mill was grinding corn today.

We looked for Borden's but didn't find any.

Although they had peach and apple orchards, the trees are all gone now. The rangers said the bears broke them down soon after the people left, attempting to get all the fruit. These eastern bears must not plan ahead like western bears. There are places in the west where people have long gone but the apple trees are still there. William says bears may break off a limb or two but they do not break down the whole tree.
After dinner William torches off some wood he has found, in the empty campsite next door. It is a nice fire with minimal smoke.
This contrasts with a thankfully further away camper whose fire was billowing black smoke earlier. William said he thought they used inner tubes for starter.
On to Cumberland Gap 4/7/11
We pass through Pigeon Forge on our route and the road from Dollywood is crowded and under construction to make it wider. We pass some really strange businesses trying to capitalize on the popularity of Dollywood. One building is built crookedly sideways and next to it is one built to appear upside down. I see Moonshine brittle and Catshead biscuits, the “largest as seen on TV outlet store”, the Appalachian Aquarium? Too much! Finally we are off the well beaten path and on our way to the Cumberland Gap.
Then we see prisoners working on the roadside in fluorescent orange vests and wide black and white striped pants. I think of George Clooney.
Here we are in a National Park campground that will be shut down if the government shuts down on Friday. We will actually have until Saturday AM before the rangers start telling people to move out. We were only planning on staying here for 2 nights anyway.
William is on a nostalgia trip with the Cumberland Gap as his dad said that the Bakers came to Nebraska from Kentucky and to get to Kentucky, you came over the Cumberland Gap.
We went to the visitor center and watched a movie about the exploration of the region, heavy on the Daniel Boone. I bought a lovely spoon rest made in the area. It has a red chicken footprint on greenish glass. We drove up to the Pinnacle Overlook. We are at the edge of three states, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia.

William straddles Virginia and Kentucky.

The Cumberland Gap was not a place of any battles in the civil war although it did pass from rebel to union hands a few times and was the source of much misery to the poorly fed and poorly equipped troops who occupied it.
The campground has just had the hazard trees removed and cut up. There is at least a quarter of a cord of firewood stacked up at each campsite. William is trying to figure out how he can burn a quarter of a cord of wood in one fire circle in one evening.
More Cumberland Gap 4/8/2011
We went over to the Lincoln Memorial University to look at their Lincoln Museum. I think William will be pleasantly surprised by the Lincoln Museum in Springfield. This museum was a bit disorganized. Just lots of bits. But lots of information. I bought a book for Axel.
We looked at the outdoor museum about Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Trail. We had already watched the movie at the Visitor Center.
We drove around the historic town of Cumberland Gap. William said it looked as if they took every old house and made a Bed and Breakfast out of it.
We found the train tunnel. We watched a coal train come out of this tunnel from high above on Pinnacle Overlook yesterday.
Back to the Campground.
On to Mammoth Caves 4/9/11
Today was mostly a driving day. The highlights were tons of red bud blooming along the road, driving through a thunderstorm with piercing lightening flashes striking the ground and bad winds after the storm.
We stopped at Cumberland Falls.
From the write up about the falls

“The falls is 65 feet high and is 125 feet in width. When the Cumberland River is at flood stage the width of the falls can quickly expand to 300 feet.
Besides the falls, one of the great attractions at Cumberland Falls State Park is the Moonbow. Visible on moonlit evenings, the moonbow is said to only be duplicated at Victoria Falls in Africa.”

There did look like a lot of water going over the falls. But having seen high western waterfalls I was not that impressed. We were not there for the moonbow. Maybe then I might have been impressed.
We spent a long time on the Louis B. Nunn Cumberland Parkway. This road is for long distance drives as it has exits only every 15 miles or so. Hardly any traffic. Lots of wind. Named for the 52nd governor of Kentucky, a Republican segregationist who raised taxes to improve the state parks and establish community mental health clinics. Needless to say he served from 1964 to 1971. Another time, another place.