Wichita, Kansas to Independence, Missouri

Farmhouse at Cowtown
see all photos »

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Woke up in Wichita.. have I already mentioned how pretty this town is???

Mind your Ps and Qs !

Jacks up - Slide in.. off to Cowtown !

Lower Middle Class Home
see all photos »

During the Summer this place is a little different.  They have people working each post:- the blacksmith has head in the oven, the ladies of the houses are cooking in the kitchen or tending to the garden etc and you just walk through and watch people go about their business and ask questions etc.

This time of the year, whilst 'open' is not active so more like a ghost town but in my opinion, a little better as we had a personal guide... just for us.

Our guide Erinn, reminded me of Barbra Streisand and I lurrrrrrve Barb!  What we thought would be an hour stroll through the museum turned out to be a four hour personally guided tour.  It was great !

Middle to Upper Class home
see all photos »

www.oldcowtown.org

We were absolutely fascinated at the houses we walked through.. all came with stories.. our Erinn really knew her stuff!  We found out who lived there, how they lived, and all the ins and outs !

Saw a newspaper printing station.  It was awesome learning how they used to print the paper and how all the letters were sorted.  Apparently, every Print shop was set up the same way, so that any printer could work in ANY print shop and be able to run the show.  All letters arranged in the same way.. with the Upper case letters on the top shelf, and the lower letters on the second shelf.. (hence the terminology of upper and lower case as we know today).  The term 'mind your P's and Q's also came from this era as the P's and Q's look very similar and were easily confused when re-filing.. hence the phrase, "mind your P's and Q's".  I love that trivia.. see?  Who said pulling the kids out of school for 5 weeks wasn't going to be educational?  We all walked away learning something and had such a great time looking around.

The bathroom.. When the travellers had come into town with a bunch of money, they'd come in with beards down to their waist and get themselves sorted .. and they'd pay to have a real bath.. a total luxury
see all photos »

I felt like Laura Ingalls,.. speaking of Little House on the Prairie (only my favourite TV show of the 70s) We discovered where Walnut Grove is and apparently there's a whole museum in Minnesota but unfortunately it's too far out of our way.  Had we known one existed, we could have gone there directly from Mt Rushmore... aaarrrrgghhh...   Never mind..

I really want to go and see it, but if we do another detour we'll miss something else and considering we've done Nth, then a Sth detour, back Nth and then another Sth Detour due to whims, I dont want to press the issue with the 'hands across America driver' :)

Come into the bathroom
see all photos »

Back on the road from Cowtown Wichita to Kansas City Kansas/Kansas City Missouri.

Arrived late due to Cowtown taking up most of our day.  I navigate through Kansas City and out the other side (with the help of Lois) to a place called 'Independence' and settled for the night.

We were watching TV and discussing what we were going to do in Kansas City the next day when we saw an advertisement for 'Silver Dollar City' in Branson Missouri.

It was advertising Xmas lights and stuff and we figured the kids would really love it, so never mind Kansas City, we're heading for Branson tomorrow !!! Major detour number 2 !