Wamego, Kansas-Population 4,246

While staying in Abilene, we decided to see a few of the sites nearby. On Saturday, we went to Wamego, Kansas to visit the Oz Museum.

While there we learned a lot about the history of the Frank Oz book and its sequels. We also watched a couple of videos on the making of the 1939 movie. We found out that Buddy Ebsen (aka Jed Clampett and Barnaby Jones) was originally cast as the Scarecrow. Ray Bolger had been cast as the Tin Man. Bolger persuaded Ebsen and the studio to switch the actors' roles. However, Ebsen had an allergic reaction to the aluminum dust used in the Tin Man's costume and was hospitalized for 2 weeks and replaced by Jack Haley.

The Deadly Poppy Fields proved tiring to Marlon...

Across the street from The Oz Museum we ate at The Friendly Cooker. This is the only restaurant we have eaten at so far that charges you 10 cents (!) when you ask for "everything" on your pork tenderloin sandwich. Apparently the price on the menu does not include "everything".

Then we headed over to see The Old Dutch Mill pictured on The Friendly Cooker's menu. This mill was built 12 miles outside of town by a Dutch immigrant in 1879 and moved to town in 1925 stone by stone. Each stone was numbered and the Mill was reassembled exactly like it had been originally. The Mill currently sits on the grounds of the Wamego Museum which consists of several old buildings from the 1800's.

The Old Dutch Mill and Museum are located on one end of the Wamego City Park.

Overall, Wamego was a nice little town. If we had gotten around a little earlier, we might have found some other things to see...maybe next time.

By the way, did we mention it was kind of hot here?

For more pictures of the Oz Museum, The Old Dutch Mill and Wamego City Park go to: http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/august/oz-museum-and-wameg/ .

To be continued...

Denver, Colorado to Abilene, Kansas

At 7:00 pm we were ready to head down the road. Marlon leaned back and took hold of the wheel...

and we all prepared ourselves for the first 200 mile leg of our journey across mind-numbing Kansas. Sammy attempted to relax...

and about 3 hours later, we pulled into our first RV Resort. They called it Walmart and it was located in Goodland, Kansas.

There were no amenities offered at this resort.

The lack of amenities depressed Chatfield and he contemplated jumping!

Boy, were we glad he changed his mind at the last minute!

The next day we finished the next 200 mile or so leg of our journey and ended up at 4 Seasons RV Park in Abilene, Kansas where it was only 102 degrees with humidity of about 90%. Here was our RV site.

We would be staying here 3 nights and planned on visiting The Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas and Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure in Salina, Kansas... For more pictures of this part of our travels, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/august/leaving-denver-colo/ .

To be continued...

Colorado The Final Days

The day we checked out of Cherry Creek State Park, we took the RV to the RV dealer to have our backup camera adjusted. We could not see all of the tow car, let alone ANY of the cars in the lanes on either side of the tow car. We were there all day as the part that came from the manufacturer to make the adjustment to the camera was not painted, so we had to wait for the paint to dry. Now that the camera had a decent view of the road behind us, we could safely change lanes.

After leaving the dealership, we headed to a public scale to see whether or not we were overweight in the RV. We came in at 31,860 pounds with full diesel and full water tanks and with all occupants in the house. We were happy to find out we had 1,140 pounds of additional carrying capacity, but faced with a puzzle as the rear end of the motorhome was overweight by about 320 pounds while the front end had 1,460 pounds more it could carry. Time to do some rearranging...

Stick with me here...I left something out. On the way to the public scale, we were on the highway and got a nice big rock flung at us by a pickup truck which hit our windshield maybe 2 inches from the top and made a nice silver dollar sized rainbow shaped crack. This was our first such incident and luckily Safelite was able to fix it so that it is almost completely unnoticeable.

Although we had our house sold at this point, we had A LOT of stuff at our friend Carol's house to arrange for storage and a garage sale. She was already planning on participating in a neighborhood sale and offered to sell our stuff for us in her sale. Being clueless about having a garage sale, we were grateful for her offer. So we headed back to Chatfield for another 4 day stay using Marlon's name to get around the "2 week limit in 45 days" rule. We had this great back-in site.

Having come up against a Saturday night at Chatfield where absolutely NO campsites were available, it was time to move on. We moved up to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds at 6th and Indiana in Golden. Here we got to see how we would get by with 30-amp service (the RV normally uses 50-amp) which only runs 1 air conditioner on the RV at a time. Not such a problem except that it was at least 95 degrees at this point and the humidity was at a rare level for Colorado.

We learned a lot about energy management while here and managed to survive the heat and not cook the cats. While we were here, the carnival arrived for the County Fair which was to take place the next weekend.

We ended up staying here for 5 nights, 3 nights longer than originally planned. Besides finally getting all our stuff organized to sell and store, this is what we did...

Ate at Red Lobster with Carol.

Had dinner with our friends Kevin and Terry. They are raising their head high to conceal their double chins, not that they have any.

Ate as many free cookies as we could as free cookies are not going to be an everyday occurrence in retirement.

And had one final farewell dinner with Carol.

And then, on Thursday, August 9th, we found ourselves heading east, leaving the Centennial State of Colorado---our home for 13 years---and heading toward the Sunflower State of Kansas.

To look at more pictures, you can always go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/august/ .

To be continued...

Sold the House

We considered ourselves very lucky to sell our house so soon after putting it on the market. We got an offer we were satisfied with, within one month of putting it up for sale. But before leaving we had to replace the carpet, so we went from this...

to this...same cats, different carpet.

On the morning of closing, this was Doug...

and this was Marlon...

We had only gotten about 2 hours of sleep.

For more pictures of the day we closed on our house, including final pictures of the house as we left it, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/july/day-of-closing-on-s/ .

To be continued...

Moving out of the house and into the RV

We decided to begin moving into the RV 18 days prior to closing on the house to give us plenty of time to sort out our stuff. Moving from a house without the benefit of having another house to move into can be quite a brain teaser. Even though the RV is pretty big by RV standards, it doesn't hold but a fraction of the contents of a house. So we had 1) stuff to sell 2) stuff to store in one room at a friend's house 3) stuff to donate 4) stuff to throw away 5) stuff to put in the RV. Dividing all the stuff into these 5 categories took a very frustrating 3 weeks or more.

Anyway, we removed the RV from storage the day after my last shift at The Lodge Casino (a rough 6pm to 9:30pm shift on Sunday, July 8th, 2007). We then stayed at Chatfield State Park for 2 weeks (they have a two-week limit in 45 days).

Then we were off to Cherry Creek State Park where we stayed July 23-31. This was our originally planned date of departure from Colorado. But we would remain in town a little longer. Here was our site at Cherry Creek.

We had some friends drop by a visit...they really enjoyed the accomodations and decided to move in and take over. Boy, were THEY a couple of animals.

This is Mr. Chatfield on the left and Miss Sammy on the right. We'll tell you more about these friends later.

While at Cherry Creek, we finally hooked up our tow car to the RV for the first time. We were pretty nervous about getting everything right, so it took a couple of hours.

At this point, we began to think we may need a drop receiver to lower the hitch on the motorhome.

We closed on our house while we were here at Cherry Creek.

To see more pictures of us here at Cherry Creek, including some other friends who stopped by for a visit, go to http://public.fotki.com/Marlonfleenor/1/2007/july/camping-at-cherry-c/ .

To be continued...