Our Retirement Trip

We had a wonderful stay in the Badlands. Great scenery, lots of wildlife, wonderful sunrises and sunsets, beautiful starry skies. This is a lazy man's blog post. I'll let Donna Sue do the interesting writing. I'll just provide you with a link to some pictures. https://photos.app.goo.gl/4BtXs2JTNZzTAUEX9

We left Parker, CO, for Lake Minatare, NE, on Monday, July 18.  While we were in Nebraska we visited Scotts Bluff National Monument, Chimney Rock, the Guernsey Ruts and Agate Fossil Beds National Monument. Here are some photos from Scotts Bluff National Monument And Chimney Rock Register Cliff is a cliff that the Oregon Trail passed by where people scratched in there names and the date. These are just a few of the many names on the cliff. The Guernsey Ruts are ruts made in the rock and nearby prairie by wagons following the Oregon Trail Here is our campsite at Lake Minatare

We made it to Parker, CO, on July 11 and spent a wonderful week with Donna Sues sister, Denise, and her husband Russell. Here are some photos of our stay on Parker. Castle Rock Bike ride from Vail Pass to Dillon Pike's Peak Garden of the Gods Manitou Cliff Dwellings We are currently ending our stay at Grand Teton so I'm about a month behind on the blog. Heading to Yellowstone tomorrow.

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...