The steam boat Arabia

Today, August the third, we went to see the steam boat Arabia. It was paddling down the Missouri river when it hit a snag and sank in 1856. It eventually was covered with silt and was preserved. The river moved, and it was dug up in 1988. It was full of well preserved artifacts. Among these were a donkey named Lawrence and a bunch of cool keys. There were also lots of boots, shoes, china, cloth, buttons, beeds, bottles, etcetera.

Air Force Academy

We went to the Air Force Academy. There, we saw the chapel. It was futuristic, except the Buddhist section. The first floor was the Protestant floor, while the ground floor was built for the Catholics, Jews, and Buddhists.
















<-- This is the Chapel.




Can you tell which religion each of these rooms is for?

They're Off!

Howard here, Eve and Maryrose are on their way home. We dropped them off at Kansas City International to fly home this afternoon. Eve has a job related meeting tomorrow and poor Maryrose is sick of being cooped up with her brothers and misses her animals. The boys and I are in Platte City Missouri after having visited the museum containing the recovered treasures from the river steamboat ARABIA lost in the Missouri River in 1856. What a museum! I had great pleasure sharing my HUNLEY observations. We found our campground with the help of one of Platte City's finest who stopped us for running a stop sign. My introduction to him was, "Good afternoon officer, my name is Howard Stone and I'm lost!" We both had a chuckle. More later.

I Have a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Toto - Not

Hello there, Howard here,
We're in Salina, Kansas this evening. We spent last night in Colorado Springs at a campground at the U.S. Air Force Academy. We have pictures of the USAFA Cadet Chapel to post tomorrow. We didn't have an internet connection last night so we are once again behind. Did you hear about the butcher who backed into his meat slicer?
We passed up my initial campground choice in favor of the local KOA which delayed our arrival further after 490 miles in the car. There is more to that story...
Eve and Maryrose fly home tomorrow from Kansas City, the boys and I return on Friday, 6 August. So far, we have traveled 7,166 miles and have 1,288 miles to get to Sullivan's Island. Much more will we post tomorrow, Good Night!

P.S. The rum we replenished at the USAFA. My appreciation of our Air Force continues to grow!

Disaster Yet Again!

We've run out of rum, why is there always no rum? Howard

Mesa Verde

We went to Mesa Verde. It was bigger than I expected.


Me(Nathaniel),Mom, and Theodore

This is a hole that everyone had to squeeze through. That's Maryrose.


This ladder is only 32 feet tall.


Another tight squeeze.


This is the Cliff Palace.

Disaster Thwarted - Again

Howard here, since I posted the note about our camper tire problems outside of Mesa Verde, the kids have caught up on some of the delayed posts which has disrupted the narrative timeline of our blog. As I wrote previously, the night before last about 25 miles from Mesa Verde, we suffered the failure of the camper spare tire that we had mounted less than an hour before. It was about 7:30 on a Friday night and we were unable to get timely assistance. What proved to be a better plan unfolded. We pulled the disabled trailer off the highway into the driveway of a small church and left it there. We pressed on to Cortez which is the major town near Mesa Verde and got a room for the night. While Eve checked in, I went across the street to the 24 hour Walmart which sells mounted trailer tires. They did not have exactly what we needed so at 7:00 the next morning, I went to the Big O Tire Store which was right next door to the motel. By 7:15, I had a brand new tire mounted on the rim and by 8:00, Eve and I had returned to the trailer, changed the tire and were on our way back to the motel with the trailer safely in tow. We bought a second new tire and rim and by 10:30 we had checked into the campground and were on our way to the Mesa Verde National Park. Above is a picture of our camper the A and A Campground Mesa Verde and the failed spare. As of today, we have travelled 6308 miles and are 1963 miles from Sullivan's Island.