Whew... a AAA mattress and wi-fi !!!

I am Posting tonight from Topeka, KS. In the comfort of a Super 8, with a wonderful king size mattress, cable TV, hair dryer, and the promise of a continental breakfast in the morning.

This has been such a neat couple of days... I've seen the hand of God or His dispatched angels directing our path... having us bump into just the right strangers at just the right times, and us making the wrong turns to find what we needed.

So now I'm going back to Wed morning since I didn't have internet. We had spent the night in Fort Madison, I wrote about having to go 10 miles off the beaten path to find a motel. So in the morning we headed west on Rte to bound for Douds, IA. Knowing that was where Ansel's paternal grandparents lived from US Census reports. So my first stop was to find out where the County seat was, so I could research deed records. That turned out to be Keosauqua, IA. Then to find the Courthouse... It was in a wonderful old building from the turn of the century that had not been remodeled. The ladies there in the Recorders office and the Auditors office were very helpful. I was hoping to find a birth certificate for Ansel's dad, but he was born in 1879, and they didn't start keeping records until 1880. However we were able to find the deed records, and transfers of the deeds to and from Walter G. Marshall to the current owners. Then took a drive out there to see where it was. These pics are of the homestead. The house is probably partly original and remodeled over the years. Except for the home site area, the eighty acres is currently all corn on the gently rolling hills. They had 80 acres of farmland. His paternal grandparents were Walter G. and Sarah Criss Marshall.

Then it was off to Davis County via Rte 2, which is where his mom's family was from. Sylvester and Mary M. Criss Vorhis were his maternal grandparents.

So as we are ho humming our way across the corn stubble fields, imagine my excitement when this car hauler passed me on Rte 2. It was the NASCAR promo-show car for Matt Kenseth.

I kept hoping they would pull over and stop somewhere as it was noontime, but when I got to my turnoff they kept going. Oh well I'm really not a Kenseth fan... now if it was the 24 car or maybe even 88 I'd have passed them and flagged 'em down.

Does the picture below look familiar????

Ok give up???? It was the inspiration for Grant Wood's "the American Gothic" painting.

As we were driving to Davis County, I kept seeing these signs for the American Gothic house... not having a clue what it was about, I decided to stop and look... Actually it was another of those little God things... the curator had a bunch of information for me... and ideas who I needed to talk to and she made some phone calls for me.

So my next stop was the library at Bloomfield, Iowa the county seat for Davis County. They have an incredible genealogy room. But you have to have a guide person to use it, and no one was supposed to be there until one the next day... the librarian called the head person and put me on the phone with her. When I explained my circumstances and that I was researching the Vorhis family, she told me of a woman who lived next to the library who was researching the same family. So we called her, and she came over and helped me for a couple of hours.

Well I'm out of steam for tonight... more tomorrow

OMG !!! Internet withdrawals !!!

I thought everyone was in the same century... the SE corner of IOWA is still in the 50's and 60's.

We did stay at the Bates Motel (or if you are from Burns - the City Center Motel:) last night, on probably 50 yr old mattresses. It was clean, but it was a step back in time. No coffee... There are no Starbucks, no coffee shops, amazing, I never thought I'd hear myself say, where it a Starbucks...

Here we are in Bloomfield, IA, the county seat of Davis Co. Troy is the name of the town we were looking for, but have found that it's been un-incorporated. I spent several hours in the public library last night with a wonderful local woman who was amazing... we found obits of Ansel maternal grandparents and the cemetary records. This morning I went to the Courthouse and found the Deeds on the property... was having trouble trying to figure out where the homestead was as they had several checkerboarded parcels.

I was sort of at an impass... God is sooooo cool !!!! Ansel wanted a cup of coffee, we went to the local coffee shop at 10:30 am it was closed, while looking for another, there was the "OASIS" and low and behold, it is a wonderful coffee house... and with WI-FI !!! So while I'm getting my internet fix... Ansel starts talking to this local oldy... and I explain what we are doing... and he points to a weathered map on the wall and asks if I saw that... (this is in the gucci coffee shop) and for decoration in this Hawaii themed place is a 1900 plat map of the county showing all the owners and a special mark showing the residence. HA !!!! This was sooooooo amazing. Sooo now we are off to look at it. Hopefully tonight we'll get back to civilization and I'll be able to post from a hotel room.

I have so much to say, and no time to write and no time for spell check... love to everyone

Sleeping in Iowa

White Haven, Grant Farm St. Louis

After we picked up the car, which is great ! We went to Grant Farm National Park before we left St. Louis, what we were really looking for was the Budweiser Clydesdale's and were directed out there. This was the home place of Ulysses S Grant's wife, Julia Dent. They built this house that they named White Haven (but it was always this color green) and it was intended for his retirement, but he died before they could live there full time. What I had in mind to go see was the ornate Budweiser Stable that is usually depicted in their advertising. They told us at the Park that the stable was in down town next to the Brewery... that was too much for me to try to navigate the city traffic when we really needed to head north... so we took time to look through the historical exhibit. I had a few melencholy moments, when I walked into the Visitor's Center and was greeted by a park ranger in full official green smokey uniform. When he put his hat on... I started to cry.... It took me a few minutes to exlain that I grew up within the Cape Cod National Seashore, and my favorite Auntie Bert, had worked for Park (NPS), from 1963 to the time of her death in 2004. She had proudly wore NP uniform complete with her smokey hat every day to work. The poor Grant Farm Park Ranger didn't know what to do with me, as I cried everytime I looked at him for the first five minutes. (my family will understand) It was a very good tour, and I learned a lot about Grant that I had forgotten. The scooter certainly makes it easy for Ansel to get around and look at things. It gives me an appreciation for all the work that the ADA folks do making ordinary places handicap accessible.

There is a Clydesdale operation next to it, the Grant Farm, There was a sign on the gate Budweiser Clydesdales, but everything was locked tight. There seemed to be lots of yearling clydes in different white wash fenced pastures. The farm was closed, and the roads were heavily signed no stopping or parking.

The Clydedales were beautiful, I imagine in summer when the grass is green it is really picturesque. I did park and in true tourist form, walked back down the road to get some pictures... and just like a greenhorn I had to whistle and get the horses to run... I'm sure the stable hands were impressed. :-)

Then as we were driving north along the river there were these crazy houses on stilts... they just didn't look safe to me. I'd think if it flooded, and trees and misc debris came down the river it would wipe these things right off their stilts.

Sigh... we did finally make it to Iowa last night. What a surprise to me... seemed like a pretty major highway running north that we were on. When we went through Hannibal, MO I wasn't ready to stop, and thought we'd make to IA, then shortly after I changed my mind and started to look for a place to stop... nada Made me laugh, cause people think that Burns is the end of the earth...

The first major town in IA, was 15 miles to SE, so I passed on leaving the freeway... when we got to the highway that will take us to Troy, looked like there should be a hotel/motel... only thing there was a Mom and Pop sort that looked like the "Bates Motel", my thoughts were, oh well probably none of the amenities that you hope to have (like a good mattress) but their lights were and there was a flashing VACANCY sign begging us to stop and we were there, and there were no lights ahead of us, signaling a more populated community on the highway up ahead of us.

the wind was howling and it was cold... I rang the bell several times, but no one came to help us... so off we went down the highway some. Finally we had to travel 10 miles off the highway in the wrong directions to find a room. secretely I was glad that they didn't answer at the Bates Motel... The whole point of this diatribe, is that there wasn't any lodging on the highway, and you had to drive so far off the path to find one. Finally got a bunk at a motel in Fort Madison. It's comfortable, and we needed to stop. I can just imagine the critical reviews that some people might write about this place, but we are safe and I was getting tired of driving. But no internet...

Phoenix too !

Well we certainly took a circuitous route to get here. We got bumped in Salt Lake, and ended up flying to Phoenix and then flying to St Louis...

Salt Lake was very pretty, all the hills/mountains were covered in snow. You could see where they had to plow snow off the runways that morning. Ansel's family used Salt Lake City as their base home from like 1924-1935. Ansel said he never remembered seeing snow on the surrounding hills the whole time he was there. While we were flying to PHX, Ansel said the last time he went from Salt Lake City to Phoenix was in a rail road box car full of race horses. He said it took two full days to get there.

Ansel said he found his first love in Phoenix. He was 10 years old and it was Mary Goldwater, sister of Barry Goldwater. Both of the Goldwater children were in his class at the elementary school he attended in Phoenix. He remembered the teacher giving a little speech about paying attention to studies, and that some of you are probably going to find love and i see that Ansel already has, and has it bad for Mary...

Ansel said that they were registered in the school with the last name of Gold. That their family was very wealthy and feared the notorious Poncho Villa. As he had a reputation for kidnapping the children from wealthy families and holding them for ransom. The Goldwater children were chauffeured to and from school by a body guard in the biggest fanciest black and chrome car of the day.

Long day, I learned a very important lesson. If you are going to travel with a Rascal... (elec scooter) don't pack the battery charger in checked baggage!!! Southwest was really awesome, we were planning to check the scooter through with baggage, but the folks at Portland said no he should keep it, and it should be checked at the Jetway. So Ansel was able to just cruise through the airport. But by the time we got to Phoenix the scooter was quitting us. It kept getting slower and slower... I was envisioning that it would completely die on us. It finally gave up the ghost at the hotel, where we had to abandon it a few hallways from our room, and then I had to come back after I got Ansel settled and push it to the room. Lesson Learned !

We bought a car this morning. Actually I had bought it on eBay through a dealership. It's very very nice, better than I was prepared for. 97 Honda Accord LX. So right now we are headed to see the Budweiser Clydesdale's and then will head north to Troy, Iowa.

Fly Southwest !

Here we go... missed all the flights out yesterday... Spring break I guess , looks like we are about to get on a flight to Salt Lake City in a few minutes...

Ansel say hellos to everyone that's reading... God bless and God speed. More later.

Just want to say thank you to my friend Jill for making this possible, we love you.

To everyone else "FLY SOUTHWEST" !!!

We are headed to Portland on Sunday. We are flying standby as a dear friend contributed airline passes to help with this trip. The only hitch is the standby part, so if we don't get on a flight tomorrow, we'll be spending the night with Charlene and Tony Pizutti in Canby. The flights are fairly full tomorrow, but they are wide open on Monday. So for sure on Monday we'll be flying over the rockies. Good news is we can take Ansel's electric scooter. It's considered a medical assist device, and so there isn't an additional charge nor is it considered baggage.

So here's one of our targets, to find where this house is or used to be. It is the home of Ansel's maternal grandparents Sylvester and Mary Vorhis, at Troy, Iowa. Pictured from left to right, Ansel's mother Eva, her brother Vivian, and parents Mary and Sylvester. Sylvester is listed on US Census forms as being a farmer, and owning farm property. Ansel remembers being told that he was born in this house.

Ansel and Friends Slide Show!