Was still feeling a bit introverted yesterday and not up for much in the way of human contact. It happens sometimes, and is maybe one of the reasons why my lifestyle seems to work for me so well. On the other hand, I do end up needing human contact once in awhile, so I am sure I'll be out and about again by tomorrow, or Tuesday by the latest.

    Today was a cold, grey, rainy day for most of the daylight part, so it was pretty easy to just stay inside for most of it and read my book and cook. Started a new book last night called 'Saga of a Wayward Sailor', by Tristan Jones. Actually, I have read this book before, but it had to be close to 40 years ago, so it seems pretty new  to me again this time. A wonderfully light tale of one guys sailing adventures around the world. Lots of fine stories that will keep you laughing out loud at times.

    Otherwise there hasn't been a whole lot going on today. Did take a nice walk this afternoon after the rain stopped. Found out that the park here has it's own little laundry building, something I was going to have to go looking for in another day or two. Now I can just toss it all in the truck and drive about a mile down the road to get it all done.

    Below are a few pictures from my trip over to the Mariners Museum the other day. It was a lot of fun, but really you need a couple full days if you are going to see it all. Enjoy!

Mariners Museum near New Port News Virginia - March 29, 2013

This stunning ships figurehead once graced the bow of the steam frigate USS Lancaster. Weighing in at 3,200 pounds it has a wingspan of over 19 feet. It must of been stunning at the bow of a ship.

This is the actual ships anchor from the ironclad ship USS Monitor. The 4 fluke design was by the same man who designed the ship. It was the 1st large iron object brought to the surface after the wreck was found. It took more than 3 years for preservationists to clean off all the 'gunk' on it, (they use more scientific terms on the sign), stabilize the metal and get it ready for display.

One of the original guns from the ironclad CSS Virginia. This gun had the tip of the barrel blown off in it's fight with the Union Frigate USS Cumberland. After hours of battle and hundreds of rounds fired from each ship, this was pretty much the only damage to the ironclad while the wooden ship was on fire and finally sunk.

A full size mock-up of the bow of the ironclad CSS Virginia. The hull above the water was made up of heavy layers of wood scantlings inside, covered with 4 inches of steel sheathing on the outside. The angle of the structure is something under 30 degrees. Calculated so that iron shot would glance off the side and shoot over the top. It is the same design as is still used on the US M1A1 Abrams tank. The hatch showing would of been where one of the guns was located.

I had often read about 'ships of the line', fighting vessels, moving guns weighing several tons around using just block and tackle, ropes and lots of manpower, but could never quite envision how it was done. Now I know.

These guns, muzzle loading cannons, were something new called the '6.4 inch Brooke Rifle'. The added band around the breech helped keep it from exploding when it got hot as normal guns were known to do. It also had two grooves, rifling, cut into the barrel which added twist to the elongated shells it used. Making it far more accurate and able to shoot farther.

A cross section of the upper superstructure. it consisted of, from interior out, 16" thick pine laid vertically, 4" pine laid horizontally, 4" oak laid vertically, 2" of iron plate laid horizontally and 2" of iron plate laid vertically. It's a wonder that it still floated, but actually somewhere they actually mis-calculated the total weight and they found that it floated higher than expected. Not a good thing since their steel plating only went below the surface of the water a small distance. Below that, and the waterline, was wood with no protection to it.

One of the guns that would of been used on many of the standard wooden ships of that era. This shows the complete tackle used to move the gun in and out. I would imagine OSHA would have a field day with this kind of set up these days.

This is a reproduction of one of the junior engineers stateroom on the USS Monitor. Even though the US Navy was slowly moving towards putting steam engines on most of their new ships, the engineers on those ships received little respect in relationship to that shown to the sailors. With the Monitor however, there were no real 'Sailors', as for the 1st time there were no sails. Yet another process that was changing.

They had a full size mock up of the gun turret from the monitor as it looked after bringing it up from more than 250' below the top of the ocean. This would of been the two port holes where the two guns were stationed. The mock up is so exact that individual shells and pieces of coral are shown. This also shows the scalloped edges of the port holes where 3 overlapping holes had been drilled to make the opening. In future ironclads this would be ground smooth but because of the tight deadline for building the Monitor, 100 days, historians think this step was skipped.

This mock up is so accurate that they actually posed it like they found it.... upside down. In the background, next to the gun, they found the skeletons of two of the crewmen. By using modern visualization techniques they were able to recreate what their face's would have likely looked like and matched each of them to one of two missing crew.

A life size view of what the turret would of once looked like. In this view you see one of the 'Dahlgrens' gun. Another new type of weapon, this one used an 11" exploding projectile with a timed brass fuse.  

Another view.

The USS Monitors actual screw propeller. In the lower right corner is a section of the actual propeller shaft.

On the outside they had a complete reproduction of the whole ship you could walk on and get a feel for how large it was. Never did learn if it had any of the interior restored.

The museum has one of the biggest collections of ship figureheads anywhere in the world. Here is one from a US east indiaman type ship.

This one from the H.M.S. Edinburgh, an English 74-gun ship of the line.

This room alone was worth the price of admission. More than 20 exactly scaled models of large ocean liners with full information about them as well as a couple dozen more figure heads on the walls.

One more figurehead. I'm guessing this one might of been on a U.S. Ship.

A model of the real first ironclads. This is a Korean 'Tortoise ship' built between 1592 and 1598. It had armor plating on the top and sides as well as spear points sticking out all over to repel boarders. It evidently worked really well against the Japanese.

This is one of those rare ship models built on board ship by one of the crew using pieces of ivory and bone for all the structural components. It amazes me to see all the detail, but then they would of been surrounded by the real thing.

There was another whole room that just had models from this one guy in it. All of these were built from the keel up exactly as a real ship would of been. He even had every wooden plug in a deck shown. If you can bring some of these photos in for a closer look you can see some of the detail he had in them. This one shows all of the ribs even with some of the outside sheathing left off.

Take a look at this one and notice all the 'stuff' going on along the sides, then go on to the next photo.

They had it set up so that there were some magnifying areas in some of the cases. Here you see a close up of the detail on the aft end of the last ship model.

Lots of different ships and a lot of research went into all of these models. I could of spent a couple of hours just in here.

One last thing that caught my eye. This would of been what most sailors in the world would of been eating, day in and day out, as they sailed from one ocean to the next, sometimes for years at a time. The interesting thing to me is that it was evidently enough, as there weren't a lot of stories of men dieing in large numbers from their diet.

   Sorry.... have been dealing with a problem back in Colorado these last couple of days that made me think I might be making a fast trip back to Denver this weekend. Still no real resolution to the problems yet, but the whole thing has been ratcheted back a notch for the time being, so no jumping on a plane tomorrow at least.

    Spent most of my day over at the 'Mariners Museum' in Newport News Virginia. A lot further drive over there than I thought, but well worth the effort. I spent more than 5 hours there this afternoon, and it still wasn't enough time. I should of figured it out when it took me more than two hours to just get through the 1st exhibited there in the museum. It was a whole history on the Civil War ironclad ships USS Monitor and CSS Virginia and their epic battle at Hampton Roads Harbor.

   A lot of the space was taken up with the search and discovery of the Monitor after it sunk in a storm. The museum had a lot of the actual parts of the ship and had full size reconstructions of not only the whole original ship, but also of the top turret as it had originally been as well as how it looked when they found and brought it up from over 200 ' below the ocean surface.

   The Monitor had been a new design for the US Navy and was built in reaction to the South building their own ironclad ship. Their ship was the CSS Virginia and it had started life as a pretty standard wooden Union Frigate. When the war broke out it was at the shipyard there in the Newport area and the Union forces actually set her on fire and sank her at the dock in order to deny the South from taking control of her. The South re-floated the hull, cut off everything above the waterline and built a new sloping wooden superstructure on top of it, reinforcing it with several inches of steel over the wood. They then installed a dozen or so guns, and put her to use sinking Union Men-of-War. She proved to be very adept at it too, pretty much devastating anything that came up against her without doing much harm to her at all.

    The two ironclads finally met in a heroic sea battle at the mouth of the James River in which they pounded each other for many hours before each withdrew to their own sides for various reasons. Never did learn why they didn't both just re-arm and then go back to it, but it may be that after firing hundreds of rounds at each other, nether one of them had suffered any real damage, while all the wooden sided boats in the conflict were utterly destroyed. Thus the age of wooden hulled military vessels abruptly came to an end that day.

   The museum also has the biggest collection of actual ship figure heads, so that was fun to take a look at. With whole displays on the history of navigation to the history of the US Navy to exploration around the world, it was a very enjoyable day. They finally had to ask me to leave as they were closing up this afternoon, and I still hadn't seen one whole building of actual small boats from around the area.

    Still a lot of places to explore in the area around Richmond so it is going to be a busy time. Lucky for me it is also starting to warm up again. By tomorrow it will be in the mid 60's again, I can live with those kind of temperatures. Will try to get some photo's put together in a day or two and get some of them posted.

    Woke up this morning to at least 2 inches of fresh snow laying on the top of the trailer and the truck... no wonder it was cold inside all night. Lucky for me I'm kind of use to that having grown up spending weeks and weeks camped out during the late fall and winter. So even though it was down around the mid teens this morning, it was still all right getting up and putting those, O' so cold, jeans and socks on and trotting out to the truck to start it up. Of course the worst part of the whole ordeal was having to clean off the windshield and windows with just my hands. Somewhere in the back of the truck is an ice scraper/brush, but who the heck knows where exactly it is.

    The truck felt pretty good as it warmed up and we started down the mountains. I had stopped in a rest area just inside the Virginia border last night, so it was still well up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. I took my time in coming down, stopping once for breakfast and then again for some lunch later on. I finally pulled into Pocahontas State Park outside of Richmond Virginia around 3:30 this afternoon.

   I already had a reservation at the park because of the dance going on here weekend after next, but I was worried they wouldn't let me stay more than the 2 weeks I had already signed up for. No need to worry though, they have nearly 200 camping sites in the park and maybe a hand full of campers right at the moment. So they were happy to see me sign in and give them money.

    For my part it was nice to be in a regular camp again that not only has electric, but also running water. Of course, it wasn't until everything was all set up and ready to go that I hooked the hose up to the hydrant and turned it on only to find that the head part had evidently froze at some point and cracked. So it has a nice fine spray of water coming out of it while the pressure is on. I'll deal with it tomorrow, after my shower, by either moving to another site, or by having them change out the head fitting. Either one will work for me. But for tonight I'll just leave it turned off.

    Tonight has just been a night to relax. Still need to go do some grocery shopping and then tomorrow or the next day I need to do some laundry and get a haircut. Once that is all taken care of it will be time to go out and play again. Lot's of neat areas around here to visit, all kinds of Civil War era stuff of course as well as lot's of maritime stuff, museum's, light houses, and stuff, as well as other neat places to visit. I have a friend here who has offered to show me a few of the local spots as well as a good pub or two. Will also try to make it down to the Raleigh/Durham area for a couple of days and do some dancing and other fun things. But right now the best part is not having it snow on me.

   A very fun day today despite the continuing rain and snow that keeps falling outside. I slept in later than expected this morning. Part of it was due to being up for so many hours without sleep, but part was due to my allergies deciding to kick in sometime around 3:00 last night. Had to get up and pop a couple of pills just so I could clear my nose and sinuses and get back to sleep. Even then I'm pretty sure I must of snored like a drunken sailor for the rest of the night. Oh well.

    Off to the Natural History Museum in Cincinnati then this afternoon. Spent several hours there going through all the rooms and reading 'all' the signs. Most people hate going to places like that with me, even though I have been known to skip a sign or two once in a while. Still, it was a great place to spend a cold and snowy day looking at really cool rocks and lots of really old dead animals and humans.

    Met up with a friend this evening and went for some dinner and drinks. She knew of a nice little Italian restaurant down near the waterfront. Can't remember the name of the place, but it was evidently once in the movie 'Rain Man' with Tom and Dustin. Pretty good food and really good beer so there were no complaints there. Afterwards we took a long "Hike" along the waterfront and looked at all the barges and boats tied up for the night. Not too bad out as long as you kept up a pretty good walking pace. We did end up stopping in for some hot tea and coffee afterwards, just to warm up and continue chatting. All in all a very pleasant evening.

   Finishing up doing some dishes now and starting to pack things away again. It is amazing how much stuff comes out of the cabinets and from under various pieces of furniture when you stay in one place long enough. Going to start south in the morning if it isn't snowing to hard and the highway isn't icy. I checked the weather in several places and it looks like there is a slow warm up coming this way. I decided to go ahead and point the truck towards Richmond, Virginia with the idea that it might work out okay if the two coldest days of the week are spent in a warm truck on the road. Of course it may mean staying in a really cold trailer in the mountains of West Virginia tomorrow night if my timing doesn't quite work out the way it should. But I have plenty of blankets and sleeping bags so I should be okay in any case.

    So below are a couple pictures I took yesterday afternoon and evening after the last dance.

Snow coming down near Covington Kentucky, home of the Pigtown Fling Dance Weekend - March 24, 2013

Taken from the back door of the trailer looking behind it at the creek. That is actually snow falling even though it looks like rain in the picture.

Another view of the creek. It never did freeze very much except for a few places along the banks.

A little later in the evening and the temperature has fallen enough to turn the snow flaky. Some of these flakes were as large as a half dollar coin. It was really mesmerizing to watch them come down.... and cold!

Threw this one in just because it kind of looked cool. I have no idea why the red color came out so much in this one. Almost looks like the woods are on fire.

   Almost forgot; today is the one year anniversary of this blog. Doesn't seem like it has been that long, but time just seems to scoot by. I've had a lot of fun over the past year and have enjoyed talking about a little of it and sharing some pictures. I know there are people out there that look at it periodically, and there are evidently even more that I don't know about. At last count there have been people in 36 different countries around the world that have checked into the site either by accident or otherwise.  It is also interesting that in all this time the only one who has ever commented on anything was one friend whom I asked to just to make sure that feature worked. You are all welcome to chat if you want to, I don't mind, I may even answer you back at some point. Just saying....

    What can I say.... last nights dance was just so much fun... and the after dance party, even more fun. So it was after 2:30 when I got back to the trailer and then another half hour to wind down, and then off to bed, tired, sore and so very happy.

   The music last night was a rousing combination of The Mean Lids along with the 3/4's of the remaining Notorious group. With 6 excellent musicians on stage at the same time it is hard to imagine the music being anything but outstanding. Susan Petrick was doing the calling for the evening and together they made the 4 hours of dancing go by as if in a flash. Six and sometimes even seven lines, it was almost to crowded. But everyone played nice and as far as I know there were no permanent injuries or maiming during the evening.

   Afterwards there was the traditional after dance party over at a local dancers place in Cincinnati. The house was a three story, early 1900's brick, wood and stucco on a street loaded with similar homes. So much food and drink and fun friends. On the 3rd floor they even had a space with a hard wood floor that was big enough to hold a full line of contra dancers. A lot of the musicians ended up going up there to jam and I believe there was some dancing that went on, but by that time I was pretty much through with dancing for the day. I only stayed an hour and a half, but it was long enough to chat with a few people and enjoy their company, I'm afraid I am still somewhat of an introvert at times, but it feels comfortable just being around all of these people.

   Took about 35 minutes to get back to the trailer from there and then another 30 just to decompress enough to finally go to bed around 3:00. Up way to early this morning. Started hearing snow hitting the roof around 9:00 and was up about 30 mins later. A quick bite to eat and then a trip over to the bath house for a quick shower. One thing to surely wake you up is having to step on concrete with your bare feet when it has been unheated in freezing temps for most of the night. The shower felt good though and it just meant dressing a little faster than usual.

   Lots of activity in the campground this morning with a lot of the trailers hooking up and pulling out before the snow really started coming down. But it really didn't snow all that long this morning, having turned into mostly rain by the time I got to the dance. I always forget that there is often a brunch supplied on Sunday mornings, and today was no different. Wasn't very hungry though so it was easy to make do with a few strawberries.

   The contra dance started at noon with The Mean Lids playing and Susan calling again. Still enough people to have 6, and a couple of times 7, lines of people dancing. Like most Sunday dances this one was maybe even more fun than all the other dance times. The band was all tuned up and relaxed, as was the caller and all the dancers were just that 'little bit' tired and looser. Plus everyone had gotten a chance to dance with everyone over the last two days, so we were all use to each other. I had just a wonderful mix of dance partners today. Everyone of them just a real joy to dance with. Indeed the whole weekend was just really enjoyable, but not surprising knowing this dance community a bit better now. So even though the weather hasn't been that great this year I have to say that come next spring I maybe looking at this dance again depending on who is playing or calling. I may just have to do it different. Like maybe leaving the trailer in Chattanooga or Atlanta and driving up from there in just the truck. Will just have to see I guess.

   In the meantime I have at least one more day here yet. A good thing since there will most likely be snow on the ground by tomorrow morning. I'm thinking a day in the city touring some of the museums might be called for and then an early dinner with a friend of mine here. Will move out of here on Tuesday if the roads are clear and head south for some warmer weather. Will just have to see what develops from there since there are a lot of options to choose from. May even get a chance to get out and take a few pictures one of these days.

   Only time for  a short note tonight. It's already 1:30 in the morning and I just got done with 4 hours of contra dancing at the 'Pig Town Fling' dance here in Covington Kentucky. Not sure what to say about the evening, it was just so much fun. The band tonight was 'Notorius' with 'Pokey' and Sam Bartlett sitting in with them. Always an amazing amount of music for just 4 people. I was there just a little bit before 8:00 when the dance started and stayed right through to the end. Did end up sitting out a couple of the last dances. Had a dancer in line pull my right arm in an odd direction and it gave me a bit of a twinge up under my right scapula where I once injured it kayaking. A couple ibuprofen and some sleep ought to set it to rights though, so I don't anticipate missing any dancing because of it.

    It starts all over again tomorrow with classes and dancing all day. Probably won't make most of that stuff. I've learned over the years that if I want a good evening dance experience I can't dance another 4-6 hrs before hand and expect to still be on my feet. Lots of friends here at this dance, many of them ones I haven't seen for several months. Good to see, talk and dance with them again. I figure there must be close to 500 people here dancing this weekend. At one point we had 7 full lines with at least 80+/- people in each of them. Most of the time though we had a total of 6 very full lines. Not sure what it is going to be like tomorrow night when you can anticipate even more people showing up.

   I guess Eden, the fiddle player for Notorious won't be here for the rest of the weekend. She evidently has to run to New York tomorrow in order to play a concert at Carnegie Hall on Sunday. Yea... she really is that good!  Not to worry though, the music will not suffer. I hear they are going to combine the rest of Notorious with the other group, 'The Mean Lids' and play with all 6 of them up on stage at the same time. Now that is going to be an amazing group. Right now though I need some good drugs and a few hours of sleep.

    Not sure it ever got above freezing here today.... sunny, but still darn cold outside. In fact it is only 23 degrees out there right now, way to cold for comfort. With that being said though it was still a nice day to be out and about, even if it was only for a couple of hours.

    Looked up the address of the park I had been looking for yesterday. Big Bone Lick State Park. With an actual address Emma had no problem leading me right up to the front gate of it. Turns out we were within two miles of it yesterday. If there had been one more sign pointing the way it would of been easy, but we took a hard right at a road that would take us back to a known highway instead.

    The park was actually open today although the camping part of it hasn't opened up for the season yet. To cold!!!!! They have a nice little museum there to showcase some of the fossils and bones they have dug out of the ground over the years. This site was a natural salt lick for 10's of thousands of years. Meaning that water from springs coming out of the ground would have low levels of salt dissolved in the water that would then be deposited on the ground as the water would evaporate away. Animals of all kinds would be drawn to these deposits  because of their need of salt. Unfortunately a lot of the surrounding ground in this area was rather swampy and mucky and if the critters wern't careful they ended up getting caught in the muck and dieing there. So there are thick deposits of animal bones here dating back 20,000 plus years. Native Indians knew of the area of course because they would also come to gather salt for their own use, but they thought many of the animal bones, such as woolly mammoth and ground sloth were 'devil' animals that their own god had killed off.

   European 'white' men learned of the site as soon as scouts started coming into the country in search of new land and riches. Both Lewis and Clark had been to the site, but at different times, collecting bones for Thomas Jefferson. Later on the area was turned into a resort spa where rich people could come and sit in mineral pools and drink some of that yucky smelling and tasting water.

   No actual digs going on right at the moment, but it looks like they have plenty of area that can still be excavated. I would imagine that it is the same problem every area like this has... no money for it. So there wasn't actually that much to see outside. It was still nice to walk their mile or so of trail and boardwalk and read all of the signs they had posted. An hour of that though and it was time to go find some place a little warmer. There may or may not be photo's at some point. I took some, but it's hard to tell if they are all that interesting.

   Off to Micky D's afterwards for some ice cream and a chance to log onto a decent WiFi signal. The one here at camp is okay for some things, but no video's, no opening more than one site at a time, etc... Even now it keeps bombing out on me. Caught up on my email, checked some web sites and reserved a couple camping sites for next month.

    Tonight it was time to watch a cheap movie, Beverly Hills Cop II, and read my book. Have just enough 'umph' to see if I can get the most recent version of The Big Bang Theory to load up. Big day tomorrow, the dance starts tomorrow night at 8:00, so not much more time before going to bed.

   Figured it was time to get to it and write something down since I went and posted a link to this blog on my facebook account yesterday. When ever I do that it seems I get a rush of viewers for a couple of days before it drops off to normal again. Of course in this case the link I posted still doesn't work perfectly, so it means that people still have to take the web address and plug it directly into a search engine. Not sure why this keeps happening, I'm no computer nerd by any means, but it is getting a little old.

    So with all of that being said there really isn't all that much to report on today. Yesterday was cold, but sunny..... but cold!!!!! I'm finding that I don't do cold very well anymore, even after spending nearly 50 years dealing with it. It could be because I don't really have much in the way of cold weather clothing with me, or it could be that I just don't want to deal with it anymore. Either way I ended up just driving around the area yesterday checking out the local scenery. Basically I got lost! Nothing wrong with that of course, but I was actually looking for Bone Lick State Park to go check out mammoth bones and stuff. But could never quite home in on it. Emma, my GPS unit, was absolutely worthless too. She didn't even list that park and just kept trying to lead me down roads that didn't actually exist. Still, it could of been worse, the country around here is beautiful. Horse country sort of, at least every hill top seems to have some horse property located on the top of it. So it is a lot of going up and then back down into the little valleys and hollar's between the hills. Saw quite a few deer and more than a usual amount of wild turkeys. So the day wasn't a loss by any means.

   Ended up making a few phone calls once I stopped for a late lunch and got a chance to talk to a few of my friends from home. It was a lot warmer there in Colorado of course.... but it often is. Good to hear from them again as it had been a while. Also called up my mom and chatted for a bit. She's in the hospital at the moment dealing with some issues. At nearly 90 she is doing pretty well, but her age is certainly starting to tell. I'm wondering if I should maybe grab a plane ticket and go back and see her rather than wait until mid June. I'll have to think about that for  a bit longer.

    Nice day to travel today. Sunny, warmer, not much traffic. I only had about 3 hours of driving to do, but took most of the day to do it in because of all the stops along the way.  Not much all that exciting about any of the stops, breakfast, gas, bathroom, lunch, bathroom.... bathroom, get out and walk a little bit, bathroom.... you get the idea.

    Finally pulled into the Oak Creek RV Campground a little after 4:00 this afternoon. Of course part of the reason for it being so late in the day was because I also crossed over a time zone line again. So once again I am now on Eastern Standard Time. But back to the CG.... not much new here, basically your standard RV camp. Lot's of sites laid out in the bottom of a little valley. Most of the sites are 'back-in's' versus 'pull-through's' which are much easier to deal with. But after several years of doing this, even I can back in pretty much every time with out much of a problem. Of course it does mean getting out several times just to make sure there are no trees or posts that are going to jump out and bite your trailer. But nothing like that happened this time around. About 20 mins and I was all set up and ready to plug the heaters in again and brew up a cup of tea.

   So I'm located about 30 miles south of Cincinnati, not as close as I would of liked to be as far as getting back and forth to the dance this weekend, but better than some of the places I've had to stay before. My campsite backs up to a nice little creek, that isn't flooding at the moment. I have electricity at the site, but no running water as they are worried about freezing weather over the next couple of days. So it will mean going up to the main building for a shower, but that isn't a big deal either. Otherwise I'm set up for the next week and ready to start exploring. I think tomorrow I'll run into Cincinnati for the day and maybe check out their museums and aquarium. Of course there is always the 'Creation Museum' if I run out of things to do. But I'm afraid of laughing to hard at some of those exhibits and being thrown out. So I'll save that for after I've done everything else first.

   

  Up early to a overcast sky and a fine drizzle of rain. No snow however so it was a go as far as packing up and getting out of there. On the highway headed east by 10:00 am, a respectable time considering the weather and having to move the bike off the rack on the trailer bumper and into the back of the pickup. I just kept having these visions of the bumper failing and the whole thing dropping on to the highway at a steady 65 mph. At least now I might be able to sleep better at night. Will have to find some one to weld it again once it warms up a bit more.

    A nice following wind behind me all morning so it was late afternoon before I even had to stop for gas. Of course going through St Louis was a lot of fun. It's usually a real white knuckle drive during the best of times, but today there seemed to be highway work every couple of miles or so and lane changes every mile or two. So two and a half hours to get through what usually takes about 45 mins.

    But that part is over now and there isn't a lot of city driving left in this trip. It was fun looking at all the flooded fields on both sides of the Mississippi River. There were several of them that were just white with resting snow geese flying north. Several of the flocks had to number between 10-20,000 of them. I've seen numbers like that in eastern Colorado at times, but it has been quite a while, and it is still a thrill to see the all in one place.

    There were also 5 different groups of wild turkeys sighted today. What a success story they have become as far as rebounding in number. It is also nice that they are large enough to spot easily from the highway as I'm driving.

   Currently hanging out in a rest area about 50 miles west of Louisville. Will most likely make it into camp by tomorrow afternoon. Finally found a couple via the Internet that look like they may work for this weekend. They are a bit farther away from where the dance will be than I would prefer, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get. Time yet to maybe finish my current book then it's to bed with a couple extra blankets for tonight.

    Woke up to snow falling on the trailer this morning. Could hear the soft fall of it as it hit the top of the trailer and then as it warmed up just a bit and turned to sleet, you could hear it even more. Just made me burrow down under the covers that much deeper... at least until a decent hour arrived anyway. It soon turned completely to rain as the day 'warmed' up. I think it made it to almost 40 degrees today. I spent a pleasant morning doing my usual routine of breakfast, comics and the crossword. The last dance session of the weekend didn't start until 12:30 so there was plenty of time to hang out and read.

    One thing I've been trying to do is find someplace to stay next weekend when I'm over in the Cincinnati Ohio area. I had a RV campground all picked out several weeks ago that looked like it was going to work out okay. Good location and not to far from where the dance is going to be or the city which I wanted to spend some time exploring. The only problem is that I didn't ever think about giving them a call because who would guess they would be full at this time of the year. It seems that isn't a problem, the problem is that they aren't open for the season until the 1st of April. So now I need to see if there is somewhere else that is open that isn't 50-60 miles away. It'll all get sorted out by next weekend though, it always seems to work itself out.

   The dancing this afternoon was as good as any I've done in a long time. It really was worth driving all the way from Florida to here just to dance to the music of Contrazz with Seth Tepher doing the calling. They were just hot the whole session through, and the last dance they did was a riot of good fun. I was lucky to have really good partners the whole weekend long. The level of dancing here in the area was perhaps not as high as a few dances back east that I have been to, but Seth kept the dances easy and everyone just had a really good time. I got to dance with a couple women I've seen at other dances further east.... oh and also in Lawrence Kansas, as well as dancing with a whole bunch of new ones. Also saw a lot of guys I've seen at other dances, but I can't really say I know most of them at all, just their faces and maybe their left hands. :)

   On another note; I need to find a 'good' welder again at some point. The welding job on my trailer bumper that I had done last fall in Maine is starting to fail again. I'm hoping it will hold together for a little bit longer, but I ended up getting a roll of rebar wire to wrap around it and at least hold it onto the back of the trailer in case it has a catastrophic failure. I must really be related to my grandfather... the one who could mend anything with a length of baling wire or twine. His generations answer to duct tape. In the meantime, I'm going to have to find room in the back of the pickup for not only my bike, but the bike rack too. Bummer!

   But for right now I'm feeling pretty satiated. Had a good dinner, got a hot shower, put on my slipper, ate some ibuprofen a few hours ago and am now sipping homemade grapefruit cello that my sister and her husband made. Life is really pretty good right at the moment.

   A colder day yesterday, but not to bad overall. Still... it was a nice day to just stay inside and read and hang out. Finally out and about a couple of hours before the dance. Needed to go pick up a bottle of wine and some snacks to share for the after dance party, so I wanted to go out for some dinner also. Ended up at Chipoltle for a chicken burrito before going on to the dance.

    The band was right on target the whole night, playing some wonderfully jazzy-bluesy numbers that made you wonder why all contra music wasn't like this. Every member of the band is so talented, but when the sax-flute player would kick in, or the guitar player would start spinning off electric guitar riffs, it was 'just' so much fun. Lot's a nice dance partners of course. Lot's of new ones, but a few whom I've met before.

   So it is nearly time to get going for the last few hours of dancing for the weekend. The only problem I'm having with the whole idea is the snow that is drifting down outside of the trailer. I'm hearing that it isn't suppose to amount to much, but I'll keep my eye on it in case I need to just hang out here for another day. A nice thing about being retired is that you really don't need to be in a hurry to be somewhere most of the time.

   Made it into Columbia Missouri early in the afternoon yesterday. It was a nice sunny day and the temperature rose into the high 60's finally, so there was no real hurry to get here early even though it was only a couple of hours from Hermann to here.

    A very nice RV campground here on the northeast side of the city. Got the trailer all set up and then ate a bit of a late lunch. I needed to go mail a package to Colorado so the next thing was to find a local post office. Ended up in the main one downtown somehow, but that was okay because it allowed me to run by the site where the dance would be this weekend as the college campus it is on, was only a couple of blocks aways. Afterwards it was time for a short walk and little cooking for the evening. Otherwise it was a nice quiet evening of reading and napping.

    Today was a beautiful sunny day. The temperature certainly got into the low to mid 70's so it was a marvelous time to go out for a nice bike ride. The weekend dance started this evening at 8:00 so I was out of the trailer and on my way at a little after 7:00. It's only about 7 miles from here so less than 15 mins to get there from here.

   The band 'Contrazz' out of N. Carolina and Seth Tepher as the caller kept things hoppin' all evening. Once again the 3+ hours of dancing seemed to slip by in no time at all. Was surprised to see so many people that I recognised at this dance, I had really thought there would be a lot fewer people at this dance since I have not done a lot of dancing in this area of the country. But there were a couple of dozen faces that I recognized and quite a few that I actually knew the name of. So it was a lot of fun to dance with some of them this evening, but also a lot of fun to meet and dance with some new people also. Right now though it is time for a nice cup of hot tea and a couple of aspirin. Then a couple chapters in my book and then some good sleep as it all starts again come tomorrow.

   A nice day overall, yet still colder than it should be. Headed south in the truck this morning with the intention of visiting the town of Owensville Missouri. Turns out that this is actually the town my grandmother came from, not Hermann itself. A town of about 3,000, it was big enough for a McDonald's and a Wal Mart Superstore. They were both open of course, but the county museum I was counting on visiting was closed for the season. The sign said it would be opening back up again starting this Saturday. But of course that is to late for what I wanted to do. Still, I did manage to stop in at the local library and look through all the reference books they had concerning family's who had lived in the area. Never did find anything tied to the Havelka name in any of the obits, military lists and burial plot lists I went through. But I did find close to a dozen people in the local phone book with that last name. Not that I was going to do anything about that knowledge. I'm just not the kind to go making cold calls to someone who may or may not be related, and who would have no idea who the heck I am. But it did look promising enough that I may end up here again someday when everything is open.

   I did get a chance to wander around their little town area before  moving onto the town of Redbud and doing the same thing there. I just made a loop south and then east before winding up again in the town of Washington. Had meant to go back to the art gallery I had stopped at yesterday with the intention of checking out the price on some regular prints of some of the paintings I saw yesterday. The lady who waited on me then remembered me of course and we picked out three 11"x17" prints of a couple of my favorites. She even took them upstairs where the actual artist was working and had him sign them for me, so that was kind of cool.

   Took the long way home just because it gave me a chance to see even more country I had never seen before. It was late afternoon by this time and the deer were starting to come out to feed. Also saw 5 different batches of turkeys out in the fields as well as one flock of snow geese. The turkeys back here are really big ones. Much taller than the Rio Grand type we have back in Colorado. Either that or they just have better habitat back here and grow bigger because of it.

    Watched a movie this evening, the 2nd Sherlock Holmes one with Robert Downey Jr. Still like those movies for some reason. Going to read a couple chapters in my book and then head for bed. I have a feeling it is going to be a long day tomorrow.





    Still having troubles with my Internet connection. Not sure what the problem is as the signal seems to be strong enough, but everything is loading so s-l-o-w-l-y tonight that I've come close to quitting several times already. But what the heck, I'm retired now, it's not like there is a lot of other stuff that needs to be done..

(Sorry about all the spelling errors, my computer is running so slow on this signal that I can't even get spell check to work. Will run a check on this post once I get on a faster connection)

   Warmed up to nearly 50 degrees this afternoon, a pleasant enough day considering. Had to still put a coat on over the t-shirt, but made do with keeping the shorts on. They were fine as long as the wind didn't blow to hard and I kept moving enough to stay warm.

    Spent most of the afternoon wandering around the streets of Hermann looking at all the buildings and shops. A cute little town that probably has a lot of people,  tourists mostly, every summer weekend. As it was neither today, I pretty much had the whole town to myself. At least the outside parts anyway. Didn't find any new information concerning my grandmothers family or any of my other ancestors that may have lived here, but I learned later, after talking to my mom, that they actually lived in the town of Owensville, which is south of here about 20 miles. So tomorrow I'll head down there and poke around for a little while.

   Since it didn't take long to see most of the town here, at least the interesting parts, I headed back the way I'd come to go visit the next big town east of here, Washington, Missouri. Wandered around the dozen or so blocks of it's old town also, but there wasn't a whole lot to see there either. I did end up spending some time in one art gallery down on their main street. As I was walking past I had noticed several paintings and prints depicting old steam boats, paddle wheelers, plying their trade up and down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. As I stood looking I also noticed a couple other pictures further back that had some old keel boats and mountain men looking guys in them. As I looked it hit me that in several of them were landmarks from the upper Missouri River in Montana that I had actually seen. In particular there was one with Citadel Rock in it and another one with the White Cliffs region around Eagle Creek. Low and behold the painter, who's gallery it was, had happened to paint a whole series of pictures depicting the journey of Lewis and Clark as well as other paintings of the old mountain style steam boats that use to work the upper river all the way to Fort Benton. So of course I had to go in and take a closer look at that point. Wonderful paintings and reproductions. Most of the prints at quite reasonable prices. If I wasn't living in a trailer that has no real walls, at least one of them would of been coming home with me. As it is I bought a couple of boxes of note cards and have the location of the shop firmly located in my mind. One of these days when I actually have real walls again I'll be back for a couple of them.

   In the meantime; here are a few photo's from a couple of days ago when I stopped and walked around the old town part of Natchez.

A couple hours wandering around the old town portion of Natchez. - March 9, 2013

Natchez was originally built on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Here we see the main highway bridge that will soon take me from the east side back over to the Louisiana side.

Walking up the main road into town from the tourist place where I parked, I was surprised at all of the house's that had been let go to rot slowly back into the earth. This one looked like it might of had some good times at one point in it's life. Kinda sad now though. 

A little further on you could get another view of the river and the twin bridges spanning it. At the bottom left is one of the many casino's that disguise themselves as old paddle boats. Still looks kind of neat though. 

The first mansion I took a tour of was this one called 'Rosalie'. Finished in 1820 it stayed in the same family right up until the 1950's when the last heir who wanted to live there died. Named after the French Fort that once stood on this bluff it became the headquarters for the Union Army during the Civil War, though two older sisters who owned it at the time continued to live there on the 2nd floor until the conflict was over. In that way they managed to save some of the furnishings from marauding bands of soldiers after the generals left.

The grounds were beautiful even though there was very little that was blooming or even leafing out. But the azaleas and rhododendrons were starting to put out some color.

Another view of Rosalie. It is interesting to me that the Natchez Indians who had originally lived on this piece of land before the French decided they needed to build a fort there, evidently got tired of the French and their ways and one day rose up and killed them all. It gives a slightly different feel to the name the owner gave his private home now.

I remember seeing redbud and magnolia's blooming down in Florida more than a month ago. But up here the magnolia's are just starting to come out. This tree will be magnificent in another week or two.

One last look at the building.

 

A view of a couple of the live oaks on the property.

This mansion was named Choctaw and was finished in 1836. Owned by one of the numerous cotton planters in the region, this was considered his 'Town Home', which is where most of the planters and their families actually lived. The plantation may have been where all the money was made, but one didn't go out there very often unless needed. All of them had overseer's to deal with the actual running of the place. Besides, there was no social life to speak of out there in the wilderness.



This mansion is known as 'Stanten Hall' and was finished in 1857. The interior of this home is just stunning with most of the original furnishing's and details still the way they were. Unfortunately, like most tours like this, they don't let you take pictures of the inside of the house. Still, if you want to see what some of it looked like you can evidently view the movie 'North and South' and this will be the home that the character played by Patrick Swazee (sp) owned.

The owner originally bought the whole block, and most of it is still preserved also. Certainly a very pretty building, but way to big for my taste. Still, it does still amaze me what such great wealth can purchase. What also amazes me is how little of it really means anything once you're dead.

A view of the back porches.



Some of the original wrought iron work around the porches and balconies.

This much smaller home is located right across the street from Stanten Hall.

A closer view of that same house. This one suits my taste much better even though it is a little on the large size also. You can't help but like a house that has a turret and a rounded porch like that.

And across the street from that last one is this 'fixer upper'. Probably to far gone to actually fix up any longer, it almost breaks my heart to see such a wonderful structure fall apart like this. I am also surprised that no one has climbed up on the roof and stolen the sheet copper off of the dome yet.



Magnolia Hall.  The last great mansion to be finished in 1858 before the effects of the Civil War started to be felt. I didn't get a chance to go into this one as it was closed to the public today. It does have some great Greek columns though.

A couple less imposing house's on one of the side streets.



I had to include this picture of 'Fat Mama's Tamale's because it was the first really good mexican food I had since leaving Colorado. (Not withstanding the place in Orlando that my friend and I always eat at. It's pretty good too). Walking by this place the smell hit me so hard that I had to go in and try some. Ended up buying a dozen of them, they were small, eating a couple and then taking the rest along with me for later. Yum!!!!