Together Again

We made our annual stop at Barbie and Chris' RV Park in Centennial, Colorado (southeast side of Denver). One of our very favorite places.

Actually, the RV park is their driveway where they let us park and plug in and hang out.

Many many moons ago, Shelley was born in Oklahoma City. During the early years Shelley and Barbie's moms were best buddies. Barbie and her sister Linda and Shelley and her brother Tom all went to church together, played at each other's houses and got into trouble together. Somewhere along the line, the going to church part and the getting into trouble parts went by the wayside. However, over the last few years we have returned to playing together, mostly at Barbie's house.

Friday night Chris, Barbie's husband, treated us to paella for dinner. He not only cooked the dinner but actually made the pan he cooked it in. Chris is an excellent welder and had taken an old worn out harrow disk and turned it into a fabulous paella pan that he uses outside and cooks over a wood fire. It was a really fun, and might I say delicious, dinner.

And the food hits just kept on coming.

On Saturday night we were joined for dinner by Shelley's brother Tom who lives northwest of Denver and neighbors Len and ILlynn. I think that as a prelude to July 4th Barbie fed us a huge BBQ dinner with baby back ribs and all the fixins – YUM. If there is anything that I love it is BBQ.

Sunday was spent whiling away the hours in Black Hawk, CO at the casinos. And just like the last time we went to Black Hawk with Barbie, we all came away winners – which of course makes it just that much more fun.

Went out for Mexican food for dinner and introduced Barbie to the Mexican drink Horchata. If you have never had this – you must ask for it the next time you are in a Mexican restaurant. It is totally non-alcoholic and delicious. It is a milk made from rice and flavored with cinnamon and vanilla. We first had it last year in San Antonio and have never seen it on a menu but it seems that if you ask for it all Mexican restaurants have it. I highly recommend it. (if you order it, don't pronounce the H, just drop it and ask for orchata).

And I forgot the Chocolate Chip Cookies. How could I forget that. When we first arrived Barbie came out of the house and I thought that she said she had to go back in because she was baking cookies. When I went in the house there were no cookies :( and I found out that what she had really said was she had bacon cooking. So, since I was expecting cookies – she baked a huge batch of excellent chocolate chip cookies. Thanks Barb – just what I needed.

So until next year – keep that RV site reserved for us and thanks for the hospitality.

Visit With The Harkins

After all the excitement of the visit to the pecan it was nice to dial it down a notch and visit with Sherman and Linda Harkins at their farm in Hale, Missouri.

Sherman and Monte were shipmates when stationed aboard the USS Jallao, an old diesel submarine in the mid 1960's and have remained friends through all the intervening years.

The Harkins have a wonderful farm where they raise cattle and all the food necessary to feed those cattle.

Did you know that hay is not just hay? Hay is a generic term for grass that has been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal feed. Hay can be timothy, brome, fescue, sweet clover, alfalfa and lots of other stuff. Hay needs to be harvested just before the seed heads are ripe and to get the most nutritional value from the hay. This year has been very tough for the Harkins to get that done due to weather. It has been so rainy in their part of Missouri that when the hay has been ready for harvest it has been raining and if it is cut it cannot dry and will mold before it can be baled.

On the second afternoon, Linda and I had driven to one of the fields to pick up Sherman where he had been working and on the way back to the house I spotted a dead cow down by a creek. Sherman got out of the car, climbed over the barbed wire fence and found that the cow had not been dead long. She had laid down and gotten over on her back and could not get up and, as I found out, that will kill a cow.

It is always something on a farm and being a total city kid I learned lots and lots. I learned things like what happens to a dead cow – it will be burned – and I don't mean like cooked for bbq but more like cremated on a funeral pyre.

So we had a fun and educational visit with Sherman and Linda, got to spend a little time with some of their family and best of all – had root beer floats every night!

Bet You Can't Crack This Nut

I have been waiting for this moment my entire life – the viewing of (drum roll please) THE WORLD'S LARGEST PECAN. 7' x 12' and weighing in at 12,000 pounds. Okay, so maybe I never heard of it before a couple of days ago but still – I figured it must be, at a minimum, the 8th wonder of the world.

Brunswick, MO advertises itself as the pecan capital of Missouri and this pecan is what is supposed to be one of the many roadside treasures found in the USA. Well, let me tell you – the experience was not all it cracked up to be. The “Nut House” store was closed, dilapidated, run down, a total mess. Had to stand in knee high weeds to get to the pecan.

We should have skipped the pecan and gone about 15 miles up the road to see the World's Largest Goose but guess that will have to wait until another trip.

Hannibal, Missouri

Hannibal, Missouri is a small city on the west bank of the Mississippi River about 100 miles north of St. Louis. Hannibal is the home of Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and is the setting for his most well known novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Samuel Clemens born in 1835, was forced to leave school at the age of 12 in 1847 after the death of his father. Clemens worked as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati until 1857 when he was inspired by a trip down the Mississippi to become a river boat pilot. In 1859 he received his pilot's license and worked at that profession until 1861 when the outbreak of the Civil War curtailed most travel on the Mississippi River.

Clemens then moved west, tried his hand at and failed at silver mining. In 1863 he began his career as a journalist and started using the name Mark Twain. His first great success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published in the New York Saturday Press in November, 1865. After that time his career sky rocketed and if you want to know more – Google him.

We set out to do a walking tour which quickly turned in to a climbing thing as we went up 244 steps to a lighthouse. Now get this picture, it is 95 degrees, 95% humidity, and I'm old, fat and out of shape and we did 244 steps for – nothing. The lighthouse is not open to look inside and the view of the river was not very good from there. Back down the 244 steps and on to the street where Clemens lived. Thankfully it was a very short street. Did not do any more exploration of the town as it was just too darn blasted hot.

One final note about Hannibal.

Let's not forget that Hannibal was the birthplace of Cliff Edwards (14 June 1895 – 17 July 1971), also known as "Ukelele Ike". He was an American singer and musician who enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop standards and novelty tunes and was the voice of Jiminy Cricket.

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is located near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

In 1803 Lewis and Clark embarked on their Journey of the Corps of Discovery from just west of St. Louis on the Missouri River. The city has many nicknames the most popular being "Gateway City" as it is seen as the Eastern/Western US dividing mark. St. Louis is also called "Gateway to the West" on behalf of the many people who migrated west through St. Louis via the Missouri River on the first leg of the Oregon Trail.

St. Louis was the fourth largest single city in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, although the city proper has since slipped to 52nd. The 1904 World's Fair and the 1904 Olympic Games, the first ever held int eh U.S. Were both held in St. Louis.

We stopped here to revisit (we had been here in 2004) the Gateway Arch and the Museum of Westward Expansion that is underneath the Arch. We could have spent several more days in St. Louis as there is lots to do here be we wanted to get on down the road – so a 2 night stop. We did manage to camp just across the river from the Arch at the Casino Queen campground where just across the parking lot we were able to infuse the local economy with dollars left in their slot machines.