Our Retirement Trip

We made it to Kansas on July 4. Our campsite was on Perry Lake about an hour west of Kansas City. We headed into Kansas City on July 5 and had a wonderful steak dinner at the oldest steakhouse in Kansas City, the Golden Ox.  After dinner we went to the Country Club Plaza area to check out the architecture.  The pictures below are from that area. The following day we headed back into the city to visit the Arabia Steamboat Museum and the Kansas City Museum.  Unfortunately both were closed.  So we headed to the Jesse James Birthplace in Kearney, MO. This is the home where he was born. This is his original grave site, although his body was later moved to another cemetery next to his wife.  His mother sold stones from the top of this grave to raise money. On Friday, we headed further west stopping at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka.  We highly recommend stopping here if you are ever in the area. We needed gas before getting to ou...

On June 29th, we headed to Springfield, IL, to visit Lincoln's Home and Lincoln's Tomb. Both are worth a stop of you are ever in the area. We spent the night in the parking lot of the Springfield Brewery, our first use of our Harvest Hosts membership. You can stay for free. They just ask that you spend some money at the host's establishment. Worked out well although it was a bit bright and noisy. The next day we moved on to our next stop, Mark Twain Lake in Missouri. We spent Saturday, Jul 2, in Hannibal just in time for the annual Tom Sawyer Days with mud volleyball and fence white washing competitions. We toured Mark Twain's boyhood home as well as the home of the girl who was the inspiration for Becky Thatcher. We ended the day with a dinner cruise on the Mark Twain Riverboat. On July 3rd they set of fireworks from the dam at Mark Twain Lake which we could see from our campsite. On July 4th we left for our next destination in eastern Kansas. We stopped in St Joseph o...

Coles Creek is about an hour east of St Louis. On Sunday we went to the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.  There are 80 earthen Mounds at the constructed by native Americans between 900 and 1300. The largest mound is 100 feet high and covers 14 acres at its base. Later that day we visited Camp Dubious, the starting point of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Wonderful little museum. On Monday we visited the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis  After visiting the arch, we enjoyed a river boat cruise on the Mississippi followed by dinner at a barbecue joint just outside Busch Stadium. There was a game at the stadium which we could watch on the TV screens at the restaurant. While we were there, the Cardinals hit two home runs which were punctuated by a growing roar from the stadium followed by fireworks from the center field scoreboard which we were sitting just behind. View of the Arch from the river.

Pikes Ridge Campground, Campbellsville, KY, June 20-25 Lovely spot on the lake at the campground. We spent several days just relaxing and catching up. We did make two sightseeing trips. We had a wonderful tour of the Makers Mark Distillery.  Got to put the wax on our own bottle. Having stopped at Daniel Boone's Birthplace at the beginning if Our trip we thought we should also visit Fort Boonesborough. We enjoyed many wonderful sunsets from our campsite. On the day we left we stopped by Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace. It's a replica of the cabin inside the mini Lincoln memorial in the photo above. They believe it is located where the original cabin was.