September 16 & 17 - exit Leawood, back on the Presidential trail!

     Monday the 16th was a "wind down" day after a busy weekend with the Palmers.  The boys were all back in school and Tom was off to work.   The three of us basically lazed away part of the morning and then went grocery shopping at the local chain market, "Price Cutter".  It's a nice chain with good fresh vegetables and fruit, a necessity for us.  We took Jenny out to lunch at a new upscale restaurant she had wanted to try, "Ya Ya's", a European bistro kind of place.  It was excellent, and well worth a visit.

     The afternoon was spent relaxing, doing computer work, and reading until the boys came home.  Jenny made another terrific dinner!  She is quite the cook, and every meal she's made for us on this and other trips has been creative, tasty and healthy!  The boys had homework and music practice to do; afterwards, they lounged around doing their favorite things - here's a typical photo of what they like to do in "down time" - computer games or TV!
     This morning was rainy and just plain ugly - we finally got the weather that we were supposed to have had the past two days.  Tom, Cormac and Colin were off by 7, Jenny took Bennett to school at 8, and after she returned we loaded the dogs in the RV, said our goodbyes, and set off in the downpour.  Our persistent and pesky leak from the roof dripped on Becky, but other than that all was fine.  Our first destination was Lawrence, KS, home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks.  It was a pretty town to drive through, with lots of large, well appointed parks.
     33 years ago we drove on I70 going west through Kansas, when oil shortages had the speed limit (as best as Jim could recall) at 55mph.  Remember those days?  Things have changed - speed limit is now 75mph!  Didn't really make any difference to us, though, as the rain, wind, construction, and driving a Class C RV kept our speed down around 55mph anyway.  Ah well, progress!

     The first stopping point on today's journey was the new Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan, KS.  The city, by the way, is host to the "other" Kansas team, the Kansas State Jayhawks!  The Flint Hills are a geographic region in the Eastern part of Kansas that has been mined for centuries and is technically called "chert".  The Museum is new, having only opened in 2011, and is very modern and well done.  The lobby is pictured here.  They have quite a few interactive exhibits, and do a great job of describing the history, "the science", and what makes the Flint Hills so unique and important.  It's relatively expensive, and one can go through it in an hour, so we wouldn't recommend going to Manhattan just for the museum.  If, however, you're there to see something at K-State, or visiting Fort Riley (Home of the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division and the Cavalry Museum, it's worth a side trip.
     Oh, a little sidelight on the name Manhattan.  The city was originally named "Boston"! Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, 2 groups of settlers heading west from Ohio and New York State got stranded in "Boston"; they settled there and renamed the city "Manhattan."
     Our final destination, and reason for heading west in Kansas, was to visit the Eisenhower Presidential Library, museum and Boyhood home in Abilene, Kansas. It was sunny, hot and humid when we got there; after opening all the windows and vents for the dogs, we went inside the welcome center and gift shop.  As with the other Presidential museums we have visited, this one had an opening film on the life and accomplishments of the President.  This one, in our view, was too long (28"), not particularly well done, and too much of a "rah rah" film that just didn't leave us with a sense of who "Ike" was and what he had accomplished.
     A tour of his boyhood home is the first stop, which he and the Eisenhower family (he was one of 6 sons that grew up there) lived in.  After Ike went off to West Point, he never lived there again; it remained his mother's home until she passed away in 1946, and her sons opened it to the public.  There is a guide who tells the story, but visitors are restricted basically to the hallways of the first floor and half the dining room/kitchen from which one exits.
     The Museum is next, a large and impressive building with a lot of displays-too many, in our view.  We were really disappointed.  One gets the feeling that one is a World War II history museum, following the timeline of the war, and not a Museum about Eisenhower.  The War is very well covered, and we understand how important Eisenhower's contribution was in the European Theatre, but why spend time on the war in the Pacific?  It also seemed very dated, not comparable at all to the Lincoln and Truman Museum's we've been too.
     After what seemed way too long, we finally got to some exhibits other than World War II.  In the photo above, Becky is in a hallway that tells some of the story of the 1952 Presidential Election, with the Iconic slogan "We Like Ike!.  There was also a very nice section of the museum devoted to Mamie Eisenhower, and her contributions both as a support to Eisenhower the person and also as First Lady.
     We enjoyed the reproduction of his office at Gettysburg.  Before he was elected President, he and Mamie bought a farm in that Pennsylvania town to retire to (their first permanent home, ever!) and after his two terms he really did retire there.  As some of the readers may know, Becky and Jim both attended and graduated from Gettysburg College, and her Freshman dorm was next to his office building!
     There are other buildings and items to see at the Eisenhower complex, including a huge research library (which we didn't go in), his tomb (which was closed today), and this impressive statue with 3 large (we think marble) panels in the background.  Unfortunately, we had just lost interest at that point.
    Abilene Kansas, by the way, is not the Abilene most of us have heard of - the Texas one.  That one is a city.  This Abilene is truly small town mid-America, just as you might picture a small Kansas town to be.  There are a lot of local shops, not a lot of chain restaurants; there are grain silos on the outskirts, and 3 main line rail tracks with multiple sidings.  It looks like a nice place for someone to grow up, and it certainly was the right one for Dwight David Eisenhower!
     We stayed at a nearby campground that took forever to get to because of construction on I70 and entrance/exit closures.  The 4 Seasons RV campground is apparently attached to a dealership, and caters primarily to long term workers.  We were one of only a couple "one-nighters" staying there, but the price was right!