Kansas to home

In KS we ran into gusts up to 40 mph on Sunday.   Got a campsite in Hesston -where Hesston Farm Equipment has been built  for almost 100 years.  Bitter cold with the wind.  We went to the store  and then baked brownies, peanut butter cookies, spaghetti.   I was helpess during Makoshika Basketball, but it survived and so did I.  No one is indispensible but Dea sure pulled thru then broke her ankle on Sunday night.  I spent time revising checklists.

Now that we are traveling today, Monday, we see that not one of the wind farm blades is turning on I-70.  Today the winds are 12-14mph so don't know if they have an automatic shutdown high winds and have to be reset.  Blades were spinning on our way down a month ago.  A second wind farm farther west was spinning fine this morning.  And KS sprays their roads with salt so all that care Mike took is on the back of the RV.  Spent the night at Fishberry campground out of Valentine with gaggles of geese flying and honking overhead.  This will be our first night stop from now on.  Good wifi, high amps , sufficient gravel and wide turns with now low overhanging branches.  I could design a good R.V park now and would put in a workout center as well as nature walk.  Been a fun journey with my hubby.  Look forwsard to the next adventure and to seeing friends and family

Across the wide Missouri

From Paducah Friday morning we crossed the windy Mississippi River twice- west and south over two magnificent high bridges within a half mile as we crossed into Missouri.  The size of the rivers in the east and the heavy commercial river traffic has amazed us both.   We crossed the state to Springfield  back in the Ozarks and then retraced roads to Carthage, place of the first western  battle of the civil war.  Wilson Creek would follow a few weeks later.  There is nothing but a highway marker at Carthage.   The woods thin out and the prairie lays ahead. 350 miles across Missouri.

We stayed at Big Red Barn Campground in Carthage - a wonderful place Shopcat loved exploring. 

Weather was reporting the storm in Denver heading across Kansas and NE.  I thought we should get as far as we could before the rain hit our area.  Mike refuses to have road salt sprayed on the bus. .  It was our only dispute of the trip.  With the weather cloudy nearby from weather.com we took off from Carthage and spent the afternoon and night at a rest area with no cell or wifi service.  Luckily the satellite TV worked and cards too  In two days we put on 222 miles.    We love the fences and entries into the country homes with their porches, columns and shutters.

With the Cargills in Paducah

barges going down the Ohio River  on Paducah Port

Murals make cement levies an attraction

A fund day of exploring Paducah, KY - a city of about 24,000 that has a great love of the arts and a fabulous waterfront.  Four rivers meet in this county - the Ohio seen the the background, the TENNESSEE, the Cumberland and the Mississippi.  WE ALSO TOURED THE NATIONAL QUILT MUSEUM BUT NO PICTURES WERE ALLOWED.  We toured their lovely brick home with a pool and stables on 6 acres.  With depressed market here they got it for a song.  The moving van just unloaded Sunday so they are Paducah's newest residents.  We enjoyed a dinner out with catfish and salmon.  A delightful rendezvous on our journey.

Natchez Trace Parkway

Awesome road closed to commercial traffic.  The Natchez Trace Parkway an ancient Indian trail from Natchez, MS (almost LA) to Nashville.  It's so picturesque and no traffic.  Would be fun on a motorcycle.  We took it from Tupelo to Nashville, 191 miles.  Will add pics later.

Let Down Your Hair

I felt like Rapunzel sequestered in the tower as I was stranded in the RV up on hoists all day in the Prevost service center.  Although  I need a haircut, it certainly isn't long enough to let down and crawl out. Actually had a good day working on Makoshika basketball tourney as raining here.  Charley Daniel's bus was across from  us and Clay Walker's nice paint job was in the parking lot.  

We did let our own hair last night as we went to Tootsies Bar downtown. The walls are filled with pictures and autographs.  Out the back door is the Ryman Theatre, former home of the Grand Old Opry.    Hank Williams Sr. got fired for arriving late after too much time at Tootsies.  Two bands played Monday night ; one in the front and one in the back of this long narrow bar filled with folks having fun and  wanabees singing along.  Walking down the street  every bar had a band.  It reminded me of  Orleans but this is country and that is jazz.  We ended with BBQ - with TN sauce - vinegary and spicy and Kansas City sweet sauce. They slow-roast the brisket for 24 hours.  Parking downtown is $6/HR. $12/ 2 HR OR $17 til 6AM.  We take the wide open spaces back home for granted.

Shiloh Battlefield

Beyond impressive.  We went back today cuz it got dark on us Friday.  Saturday was snowing so I did some retail therapy in Tupelo, a town with every known franchise. At the liquor store the kid said he's seen snow 3 times in MS.  Lucky us.  It was nothing that stuck on the ground but ironic that it was 50 in Glendive.

Politically correct has run amuck. 150 years after the war Memphis city council renamed Forrest Park last week  cuz General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a brilliant tactical Confederate Calvary leader but too cruel in his killing and later associated with the Klu Klux Klan.  He and his wife were reburied in the park in the 1910s by people that thought he should be more honored.  Old Miss had to give up their plantation owner college mascot cuz he seems too racist.  I said we could relate cuz UND faced sanctions by NCAA if didn't change Fighting Sioux name.  The historian at Shiloh told me Memphis also changed the name of Confederate Park and Davis Park ( Confederate Pres, Jefferson Davis lived in Memphis after being released from prison. )

April 6, 1862 each side had around 40,000 with the Confederates surprising Grant who was waiting for more troops.  They battled from sun up to sundown and by the color coded and shaped signs you can see where the confederates pushed them back and at what time and day,  General Buell arrived with 20,000 fresh troops that night via the Tennessee River and by land.   Confederates retreated to Corinth to protect the RR Monday afternoon.  23,726 died- shocking the world.  To know what to do you listened to the drums - 100 different drum rolls for charge, retreat, lunch, etc.  To hear over the din took 10 drummers.  After 1865, the military changed to buglers cuz the different pitch could be heard easier and the other 9 could be fighting soldiers.

The military terms boggled me so here's the lesson from the ranger:  Company -100 soldiers from the same area named letters (not J), led by captain.  Regiment -10 companies so 1000 men named numbers based on when commissioned, led by Colonel.  Battery 3-4 regiments, led by Brigadier General.  Divisions - 2-3 batteries or 10,000 soldiers, led by major general. At Shiloh may be 6000-8000 cuz of previous loses, on sick leave, etc.  The union names their divisions after Rivers - Tennessee and the Ohio.   The south named them after regions -the Mississippi (Valley).


Shiloh has many monuments honoring those who served.  Illinois monuments dominated the battlefield but they had the most soldiers.  Statues had to be approved and paid for by the state, shipped down by boat, pulled to the sight by oxen and placed at the appropriate site.  Union outnumber the south's statues 50 to 1. I liked one by Arkansas Daughters of the Confederates in 1910. The south was broke and had more pressing issues than statues after the war,  This park allows no statues honoring individuals as it was so chaotic, it was the soldiers, not the generals who were the heroes here.  One statue for Alabama's General "Fighting Joe:Wheeler snuck in during the 30s when a weak supt. bowed to wealthy influential southern ladies.

the south

Traveling from GA through Alabama to MS - a few comments - miles and miles of rolling wooded hills, lots of manufacturing near the big cities -Birmingham AL 1 million - we just kept on the interstate and didn't check out Civil Rights, but John Grisham's A Time to Kill was on that night,  After the trashy yards of the back hills of FL, lots of manufactured homes, to nice antebellum manions in GA and MS &TN.  Shutters,porches,  columns, brick are common sites. Confederate flags still fly.  Saw cotton fields and rice.  soybeans and corn are common.

Corinth,MS

We are staying in Tupelo -Elvis's birthplace, but the reason it its proximentry to Corinth Civil War Battkefield and to Memphis.  The confederates move south after the win APRIL 6 AND THE DEFEAT APRIL 7 AT SHILOH. IN CORINTH THE MISSION WAS TO PROTECT THE RAILROADS.  If you could control the transportation of good by land or sea, you could control the war.  Black slaves, called the contraband of war, learned to read and had a model camp here run by a  minister with every house having a garden

The numbers in battle were 40,000 or at Shiloh 100,000 with 23,000 dead. The logistics are hard to fathom - feeding, caring for the injured, burying the dead.