Friday, August 28, 2015
For the past week, Pat and I have been traveling out west, mostly in Kansas. Back in June, we said to ourselves, “We oughtta go out to Kansas to see those combines rolling in wheat country.” Well, life happens, and we didn’t make it during their wheat harvest. Still, our interest was still piqued to see some places out there.
We enjoyed Joe’s barbeque in Kansas City, as well as the Negro League Baseball Museum, and the WWI memorial. Kansas City is a neat town!
This was a great visit for baseball fanatics!
WWI Memorial. Yes, that tower is 227 feet tall. The view from up there is terrific! The exhibits inside the museum were impressive.
Thanks to some of our son John’s research, we found the grave of my great- great-grandpa, John M. Carnahan. He was born here in SW Indiana, but later in his life moved to Cherokee County, in SE Kansas. John M. was the first Carnahan of our family line to be born in the USA. His father William came to Indiana from northern Ireland as a very young man. Since William’s arrival, there have been Carnahan family farmers in SW Indiana.
City Cemetery
Columbus, Kansas
The grave of my great-great grandpa.
Hutchinson was a place we visited, and the Salt Mine Museum there. There were many grain elevators in Hutchinson… those were the ‘skyscrapers’ there.
In Lacrosse, KS, we met delightful 88-year old Marie at the Post Rock Museum. Her story was terrific.
Marie was our guide through the Post Rock Museum. Her story was really neat. She told us of her grandfather that ‘homesteaded’ in Kansas. She is a widow of a WWII veteran, and still is engaged in the management of the farm, now operated by her son. We discussed the wheat market, and she was proud of some of her sales of wheat at $5.23, but regretted some of her 2015 wheat remained to be sold.
This is one of those “post rocks” which Marie explained to us. Quarried and cut by hand over a hundred years ago, many like this one are still in use in central KS.
We toured the Barbed Wire Museum, with the guide named Dick. We even visited the “world’s largest ball of twine” in Cawker City. Yes, that could be considered obscure, but the register that day listed visitors from El Salvador, Vancouver Island, Texas, and even another Indiana visitor, from Bloomington, no less!
Yes, this is the world’s largest ball of twine, 43 feet in circumference!
We loved the views of the beautiful farm fields and we found the “Flint Hills’ quite breathtaking.
A view of the Flint Hills of Kansas. Sweet.
We stopped by to see K-State in Manhattan and KU in Lawrence. Impressive places, each with a lot of new construction activity.
Finally, our trip concluded back in St. Louis, where we were fortunate enough to have a short visit with one of our special “French sons”, Maxime Caffe. Max works for Bunge Corporation in Geneva, Switzerland. He just happened to be on a trip to Bunge’s St. Louis office. We had to catch him before he started his work Thursday morning, for after his time there, he returned to Geneva. What a blessing it was to have that short visit.
After our special visit, we dropped Max off at the Bunge office in suburban St. Louis.
Back on the farm today, we’re catching up on the mail, the bookkeeping, and the yard mowing. We had a very pleasant and relaxing trip, saw many beautiful sights, and enjoyed great food along the way. But back to farmer reality today! Among other jobs, the bush hog needs to be run.
It was a beautiful sunrise in SW Indiana this morning!
At 58ºF, the morning here was pleasant. With fog in the valleys, it looks and feels like fall today.
