July 5

We received several nice emails from the ladies at the Sumner County Kansas Historical and Genealogical Society.  They have followed through on some research on common interests and added us to their Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sumner-County-Kansas-Historical-and-Genealogical-Society/218930379987 ).

 

We left North Platte and made our way to Big Springs, Nebraska – a stop mentioned in the diary.  Not much left of the springs.

We then proceeded down Hwy 30 following the UPRR tracks.  The diary mentions several times that they followed the tracks.  It also mentions camping along Pole Creek.  We are pretty sure the name now is Lodgepole Creek and probably now only sees water during floods.

 

By following the UPRR tracks 125 years ago, the Parcel’s missed seeing Chimney Rock.  We drove about an hour north of Hwy 30 to see the famous Oregon Trail landmark.  It made for a longer day, but was worth it.

 

The picture of Linda and the old wagon was taken in the Oregon Trail RV Park near Chimney Rock.  Linda is keeping a careful eye out for rattlesnakes.

July 4

Happy Fourth of July!  We thought this was going to be a day of rest, but it didn’t turn out that way.  We did laundry at a Laundromat in the morning and toured a museum in the afternoon.  We noted an obvious contrast in how washing clothes was done 125 years ago versus today.

Before heading off to the Lincoln County Historical Museum in the afternoon, we went to the Golden Spike Tower overlooking the world’s largest classification train yard (over 8 miles in length and 2 miles wide).  This train yard does not build a train of cars, but can separate a train of cars off on a separate track.  This yard does major refueling, is Union Pacific’s largest repair facility, and is a location for changing crews.  They also scan the barcodes on each car that goes through the yard.

The museum had a wonderful collection of buildings.  The building in picture dates back to 1869, so could have been seen by the Parcels as they passed through North Platte.

 

The family did not stay in North Platte but camped in the rolling sand hills north of the city.

July 3

Started out at a little after 9:00 AM and headed north.  Found a number of creeks mentioned in the diary and looked hard to confirm the diary’s note of seeing many stone buildings around Russell, Kansas.  We were disappointed until we drove north of Russell and saw lots of things made from quarried stone (note stone fence posts in picture).

The diary noted seeing lots of sheep – we didn’t see one, but we did see cattle in both Kansas and Nebraska.  As we changed directions and started to head west in Nebraska, the diary said that the farms grew corn – we didn’t see any corn, but we did see lots of sorghum.  There must be corn in the area we drove through since Gothenburg processes corn.

We did our best to find a sod house.  Gothenburg, as our internet research indicated, has none other than the Sod House Museum.  Even though we arrived after they closed for the day, we did capture a picture.  Unfortunately, this museum did not host a recent meeting of sod house enthusiasts that met in Holdrege’s Nebraska Pioneer Museum.  (True – they told us!)

The diary mentioned passing the old remains of a fort near North Platte (our place of lodging for two nights).  The internet helped us identify this as Fort McPherson and let us know that the site is now a cemetery.  We stopped here and found a national cemetery.  We arrived in North Platte around 9 PM.

July 2

Today will be hard to beat for making discoveries.  At the Sumner County Historical Society we met a lady whose 101 year old mother now owns the homestead of Amariah & Myra Parcel.  The helpful ladies in the office were able to tell us exactly where the homestead was.

We are trying to follow the directions given in the diary as close as possible.  As a consequence, our poor “new” car suffered over dusty roads.  The road may have been a bit better than 125 years ago, but on our trip we saw small oil rigs and large wind turbines.

The diary mentioned cottonwood trees in St John, KS.  We looked and looked for cottonwood trees in this small burg, but found none.  We did find a nice little park with many types of tree other than cottonwoods.

July 1

Drove west and a little south from MO to KA.  Arrived in Wellington, KA to start our adventure about 20 minutes before the Chisholm Trail Museum closed.  Took pictures of what the community looked like in the 1880s and talked to a helpful volunteer who told us that the Historical Society could have some information that we might find interesting. 

After supper we drove ten miles out of town to the west to where we believe the great grand parents had a farm and talked to a nice lady in that general vicinity that told us about a local cemetery.

June 29 & 30

Drove to the Lake of the Ozarks area in MO to rest a day before starting our trip West.  We saw a number of Amish on the highway in IA and MO, and saw a couple in the Hardee’s restaurant we stopped at for lunch. 

We had hoped to stay at a cabin on the Lake of the Ozarks, but found a motel in a resort area near Truman Lake – a few miles from Warsaw, MO and a few more miles from the Lake of the Ozarks.

June 28

Not much to report today.  We drove south and a little west to Altona, Iowa just east of Des Moines.   We had downloaded the audio book of Dan Brown’s new novel – Inferno.  Listening to this and a number of lectures made time pass quickly.