This is a place YOU HAVE TO VISIT !!!!

We have shown you some out of the way places that have turned out to be quite interesting to us.

But here is one you HAVE TO VISIT!

Well, maybe I am prejudiced because I spent almost all my adult life looking a pictures which showed mainly bones.

But look at what there is to see:

a turtle skull being cleaned by bugs.
Boy, that is a lot easier than me scraping the meat off my wallaby, ducks, and weasels before I'd mount their skeletons for display!

And take a look at this giant ankle and knee of the giraffe.

It's right there for you to run your fingers through it….and they don't even mind!

How about the entire articulated skeleton of the degenerative arthritis in an adult dwarf?

We spend years learning to identify these guys on pre-natal ultrasound. Here is the other extreme!

And for you CSI fans, how about learning to profile off the skull's characteristics? 

 See the flat upper lip area of the Asian on the left below? 

And there a a lot of other animals to compare:

I have to tell you that my wife kept going between exhibits and telling me the difference between species…..and that form a person who had NEVER shown any excitement at any of the famous Natural History Museums like those in Chicago or Washington DC!

She was thrilled to see how the spine of the turtle is fused to it's shell,

 but, the armadillo's is completely separate!

 Or…. that a tibia, unlike other bones,  just doesn't heal well.

Yes, bring your kids. They will be entertained and educated at the same time,
From the small to the huge,

 like this elephant 

or this hippo to the small mole rat!

Ah…. if only I could return to my youth and take Comparative Anatomy all over again!

And if you really, really wanted to know what your great great great  great grandmother was like,
how about checking out what bones have been recovered of Lucy, the mother of human race!

Yes, I am thinking of signing up for Comp. A. one more time!
THAT would be a great retirement.

One out of 25 Americans is said to be somehow connected to the kids represented in these statues.

Yes, they are playing and having fun.
But, pay attention to where they are.

Here is the most telling picture.

They are all by a train station.

Here is their story:

Unfortunately the center was closed by the time we drove into Concordia, Kansas.

You can copy & paste these links on to you browser for more information:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/
http://orphantraindepot.org/history/the-orphan-train-experience/

And to read some of those kid's stories, check this out:
http://orphantraindepot.org/orphan-train-rider-stories/

But, the stories do not end there.
Catholic Charities (in a program called Peter Pan) helped place children sent to the US by parents who could not leave Cuba after the revolution in the 1960's.
My 2 brothers were sent to a family in Las Vegas, New Mexico. 
Meanwhile my 15 year old sister and I (8 years old) stayed with a lady and her 2 children in a motel room in Miami, till our parents escaped form the island.

And the cycle seems to be occurring again, now from the Mexican border.

We certainly do appreciate all those involved, then and now.

Putting too many miles on the van

We had wanted to take a spin around this recommended route of the US. 

It's 11,000 miles we figured, if one sticks to the route.

So, we loaded our bikes on the new van, and headed towards the Eastern part of the map.

Here we are in the town of the Winnebago factory, taken at "The Golden Hour".

The goal was to leave early and avoid tornado season. 

We only got as close as a day's drive from the ones that hit Iowa & Illinois.
But we did get a great "morning-after" pic after the storm passed over us, which we posted on http://drivinghereandthere.blogspot.com/2015/04/early-morning-beauty.html.

Unfortunately we did find lots of cold & rain on our trip.

On this particular day, we slept in 26 degrees, near the Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina border, at the start of the 26 mile Virginia Creeper Bike Trail.

But we didn't let the weather disturb us. 

We just put on our Kodiak rain gear and marched on.

You might have seen some of the places we visited.  

There are a few more we might put on the blog.

(And maybe someday we'll talk about downsizing to 102 sq. feet living area for a month.)

But we now need to slow down a little.

We ended up putting over 5,500 miles in 4 weeks.

And, at this rate, we might run out the new vehicle warranty before the first 12 months!

Some folks don't really care what's in front of them.

Take this young lady, for example.

Does she care about being at Monticello?

I think she has other things on her mind.

And where might you suppose this church is at?

Here's another church form the midwest.

It's famous among some circles. 

Have you ever heard of it?
It's the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

If you were an Evangelical at the turn of the prior century or even a Statler Brother fan this past century, you might have heard it's song.

Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn have also recorded the song.

By the way, it is in central Iowa, in a towns called Nashuaa.


The story goes that the author rode to see his bride across a valley in Iowa back in the mid 1800's. 
He imagined a church in that valley which would be a beautiful spot for their wedding. 
So he wrote a song.

It became popular and a preacher built the church there. 
(Since it was during the Civil War, they had no white paint; so they settled for the brown they could get.)

The guy who wrote it sold the song to a publisher for $25 and with that went off to medical school in Chicago.

But the church still stands and people come form all around to get married in that church.

They say they've now had 100,000 weddings at this place.

So we stopped and snapped a pic of the inside.

Seems peculiar that so many would choose a church with 2 side aisles, and no central aisle for the bride to parade through. But, it is still extremely popular. Shows how much I know about those things.

Incidentally….although it is beautiful, I  have to admit, that if the sermons were long, I'd  be very likely to "commune with God" via the view out the window. 

Wouldn't you? 

(Maybe that is why Catholics priests like stained glass in their church windows.)

Here's the world's smallest church?

Or so they claim.

It is in mid Iowa.

If you have a car full of folks, you could fill it up.

But, then that is not why it was made.
Seems like it was a small village at the time.
Here is their story.

Early morning beauty

I am glad our 2 year old pup wakes us up early in the morning.
Otherwise we would have missed this scene.

Just one hour's drive west of the big city of Chicago, life does indeed seem peaceful.

However, this was taken after a night when the storms passed us, and after tornados touched down in Iowa & Illinois.

The moral is, beauty comes at a price.

Here is another Presidential house. Who do you think lived in it?

Here's the inside,

and the only bedroom,

and a machine his mother used to put money away for the children's education, after his dad died.

Yep, it's a sewing machine, so you know its in the late 1800's or early 1900's.

One more clue.

This is where they worshiped.

Note the sliding panels that allowed separation of men and women to prevent influence of one group upon the other's discussion & thoughts. 

Yes, he was a Quaker. And he was a Republican.

But no, he was not Richard Nixon.

It was Herbert Hoover….

elected right before the financial crash of 1929.

His life was not easy. His dad died. Then his mom. He was taken in by relatives in the Illinois village. Then an uncle in Oregon lost a son, so he asked to have 10 year old Herbert sent to him. 

And this how he got to the west coast, where his uncle was a school master. From there it was to Stanford and a geology degree. 

He got elected as a science and business type guy. So when the crash came, he thought paying off the nation's debt was the right thing to do. Things got worse and he got replaced by F. D. Roosevelt and his capital spending techniques.

Hoover was quite happy to have the opportunities he had in life. Here is what he said.

Like a Quaker, he was quite humble and interested in helping.
In his later years he did much to let children enjoy a more happy childhood. 

He was instrumental in forming the Boy's Club and UNICEF.

(PS If I had to choose a religions, I think I should look at this Quaker way of life.)

So, now you've seen 2 Presidents' homes. 

Both from Illinois, and both self-made men.

What President's house is this?

Lets switch gears a little again and talk history.

This house belonged to a President of the U.S. right before he got elected. 
Who do you think it is?

You know that it's not Washington or Jefferson. And we'll tell you that it is not Madison's or the early Presidents.

Here is the formal parlor, where they entertained important visitors and the children never entered.

Would you believe that this was Honest Abe's house, right before he got elected?

Yes, it is. 
He might have been a poor man, born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky.
But, when he got his license to practice law he worked a lot. 
In fact, they say he was gone for 3 to 6 months at a time, involved with cases through rural Illinois. 
But, by 1857 they were doing financially well. His wife had added a second story to their house and it was looking pretty spiffy.

They know the details because when elected, the Republican Party brought a man to sketch the scene at Lincoln's house as they told him the news. The fellow even sketched the wallpaper!

Here is a recreation of the Family Room.

And take a look at this!
They say it was one of their favorite forms of entertainment.

It's a stereo-scope, where they could put a card and see stereoscopic 3 dimensional images of the  great creations of the world…like the pyramids!

Somehow, this was just not the image I had of Abraham Lincoln.

It is good to live, travel, and learn.