Min-a-sow-ta, eh?

We made one stop between Wichita and Minneapolis, at am Iowa Casino RV Park. Not the best park we've stayed in but the price was right...$20 a night plus they threw in a couple of decks of cards as a bonus. With Jokers!

Lakeside Casino in Osceola, IA (south of Des Moines).

Welcome to Minnesota, eh.

This display was near a small airport in Minnesota before Minneapolis.

A view of Minneapolis.

The main reason for the trip to Minnesota was to do more genealogy research. My Mom's Bryant & Trott families left Maine, stopped briefly in Pennsylvania, and again in Anoka Co, MN before heading on to California. They both were granted land patents and Joseph Trott set aside an acre for a burial ground on his property where one of his daughters is buried.

My first stop was the history center in the town of Anoka to see what they had on the Trott family. There wasn't much there and the person helping me was not a genealogist so didn't know where that type of information would be. I was able to find record of the cemetery and where to find it so we set out to do just that. The cemetery is actually in the town of Ramsey a few miles north of Anoka and using the GPS on my phone we were able to find the general area. We took a small dirt road off the main highway and ended up in the yard of an old guy who knew of the land's history and was able to direct us right to the cemetery. I'm not sure we would have found it without his help. The records at the history center stated that the cemetery was 'neglected' back in 2001, but we found it in pretty good shape. The city of Ramsey now owns and maintains it and there are recent graves there.

The Anoka County History Center and Library

Trott Brook runs through Joseph Trotts property.

The Trott Brook Cemetery

Zilpha Tennison was the daughter of Joseph Trott.

Along with Zilpha was the grave of another wife of William Tennison, Sarah Tennison. They both died quite young. William died in California.

Proof I was there :-)

The KOA in Maple Grove, MN outside Minneapolias was the closest to Anoka.

Of course we had to visit the Mall of America, the largest mall in North America. It has 4 levels, 520 stores, 50 restaurants, a theater,, miniature golf, an aquarium and a themed amusement park.

The miniature golf course on the 3rd floor of the mall.

A full-sized roller coaster.

Ninja Turtles ride.

It's really just like any other mall aside from the attractions which are in the middle. One nice thing about Minnesota shopping is that there is no sales tax on clothes and shoes. We took advantage of that at one of their shoe stores. The mall was equivalent in appearance to Virginia's Pentagon City and Tyson's Galleria plus a couple more floors. It's very nice.

The Vikings new stadium. Pretty huge!

We decided to head for home on Monday. Won't be in a hurry, but we've visited all we planned to on this trip. We're thinking of going through the Black Hills since it's been a few years since we visited Mt. Rushmore. No plans beyond there yet.

Catch Up Time, Again...

It looks like it's been a while since my last blog. Sorry about that. Getting into Carol and Jim's place was not an easy task. We drove as far as we could and just got the Jeep off the road and decided that was far enough.

 

We had to unhitch the Jeep and back out onto the street to get out again.

Carol and Jim

Bruce, Carol, Jim, & Coal.

 

Carol and Jim live in Fairview Heights, a suburb of St. Louis, IL. They've only been married a few years and it was the first time we had met Jim. It's very woodsy in their yard and they have a big black lab that really wanted to play with Freddie and Roxie, but they weren't too interested. Fortunately they got along ok as he is a really big dog!

We didn't have any hookups in their yard, of course, and we didn't want to run the generator all night and keep the neighbors up, so Bruce opted to stay in the motor home with the dogs and I stayed in the house with the ac (I'm no dummy!) It was too hot for me out there. We had a great time getting caught up on all the family news with Carol and getting to know Jim. We're hoping they will have a chance to come out to CA for a visit. Jim has never been to CA.

We passed this mailbox leaving Carol's.

Going through St. Louis, we crossed the Mississippi River on the new (2014) Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge.

A barge coming down the river,

We stopped one more time near Kansas City,

There are metal figures of bison, wagons, and pioneers along the highway near Kansas City.

Welcome to Kansas!

Then we spent a week visiting Phil and the girls at McConnell AFB in Wichita. One thing we hardly ever get to do when we visit our boys is see them 'at work'.  As Vice-Wing Commander, Phil has the honor of presiding at ceremonies. This time we got to witness him speaking at a retreat ceremony honoring MIAs.  Phil had some great anecdotes about Vietnam era MIAs who's remains had been recovered..

The honor guard lowered the flag after the National Anthem played.

Phil has a 'stand-up' desk in his office and enough memorabilia to fill a museum.

This is one display of coins from military units around the globe.

Here are a 'few' more. We gave him one from the Flight 93 Memorial to add to his collection.

We got to watch a couple of volleyball matches with Livie's school league on Saturday.

Love the pink shoes!

Phil tried his hand (or foot?) at calling the ball in or out. I think this was OUT.

The girls won one of two matches.

Our oldest granddaughter, Alexa, was selected to be a member of the National Junior Honor Society from her middle school. We got to attend the induction ceremony.

A proud moment for us all!

 

Kansas has experienced quite a number of earthquakes resulting from part of the fracking operations in Oklahoma. No damage has been recorded on the base, but there was a 5.9 earthquake a week or so ago that lasted for quite a while. Not something you would expect in this part of the country, but it's becoming more and more common. I think one happened as I was blogging today.

Next we are going north again...have a little more genealogy research to do in Minnesota and then homeward bound. We expect to be back around the first week of October barring any bad weather, mishaps, etc. So far this trip has been thankfully uneventful as far as the RV is concerned.