The end of the winter journey is in sight. We pull out tomorrow morning from here to go the last 300 miles to Saylorville Lake’s Volunteer Village, where we will spend the summer. We’ve had a fun couple of days visiting family in Leavenworth.
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Champ and I with Jeff and Kathi[/caption]Arriving on Saturday evening after a touch and go start that morning, we enjoyed dinner at a local steak house in the ominous shadow of the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.
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Sitting at General McArthur's desk[/caption]Sunday, Jeff took us on a grand tour of the base where his military career wrapped up and he now works as a civilian. It was a very interesting and different perspective on the military role on the international stage through their educational endeavors for domestic as well as international military students. We had the morning to visit and catch up, while Kathi attended church services. The mornings entertainment was getting stopped and questioned because an MP saw me taking a picture. People protest my photo taking on a regular basis, but it is usually my camera-shy family, not an law enforcement concerned with what exactly I photographed and why. I had to hand over my camera and let him look at my photo role. It’s the world we live in I suppose.
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Canon at Leavenworth poised over the Missouri[/caption]Kathi joined us around noon and they treated us to lunch at a place called O’Malley’s in a nearby town across the Missouri River. Located in the original building of an old brewery, it has a 58’ deep basement that once served as the fermentation and storage room and is still used as bar space on the weekends. Perhaps the most interesting takeaway for me was learning that the tunnels that connected the basement to the river to transport ice blocks for cooling was also part of the Underground Railroad for fleeing slaves. We had a delicious leisurely late lunch with plenty of time to linger and visit after the meal was done. We visited a local winery and McCormick’s distillery, sampled some Missouri wine and locally distilled spirits, made some purchases, and called it a day. Oh yes, did mention it snowed most of the day? I imagined as a snow bird I would avoid the snow, not have it follow me around!
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April snow in Kansas[/caption]Today Champ and I ventured to Leavenworth’s Mainstreet Shopping area to check out a gourmet kitchen store Kathi told me about. The Monday curse exists here as well. Most shops are closed on Monday. We run into that often in small towns with busy weekend shopping traffic. Unfortunately, Mondays seem to be the day we have time to check them out. We’ll have to work on that routine.
The visit will end this evening with dinner. Tomorrow we will pull up the jacks and let the southern wind push us home, hopefully drafting some warm air along with us.
Until tomorrow…
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