A DAY FULL OF LUCK! (READ THIS AL!)

Since we acquired all this knowledge the last couple weeks, we decided to stop at Ameristar for a couple hours. Wow, I had something really unusual happen! I played one of the new Zeus games and got a bonus. If you get all four Zeus' in the first row, it respins twice and you try to get as many Zeus' or wilds that you can. During the bonus, I got them all for $75. I was happy! I kept playing, and decided to splurge for a couple spins and play two bets instead of one (80 cents). On the first spin, it happened again. This time I was amazed and I took a picture! I came home with a couple hundred bucks! Those slots saints were working overtime!

Isn't that Zeus just one of the cutest fellows you've ever seen?

ON TO BLUE SPRINGS

We drove about 65 miles today, to the Blue Springs campground in Lee's Summit, MO, a suburb of Kansas City. We'll be here all week with the SKP Genies working on our family histories. We took a ride this afternoon and I had to take pictures of these pretty roses at the information center.

Remember, you have to stop and smell the roses-if you can!

OUR TURN

To say Don was nervous would be an understatement-he developed a serious fear of tow trucks the past few days! However, he was able to hit the pedal and drive right out. Skillfully done! He's really proud and has been talking about it all day. I'm sure he'll share his story with everyone. Here we are on the road!

We left a few tracks.

We made it! Yea!

TIME TO LEAVE

After worrying for 24 hours, it was time to leave this morning. Many of our neighbors were having major problems, especially trucks without 4x4. The guys were really getting creative-anything to save towing charges. One guy pulled out his neighbors truck, then hooked his truck to the 5th wheel to get him to the road-then they switched. The one below took a lot of time and a lot of opinions. They used boards on the ground, and the men climbed in the pickup to add extra weight, but that didn't work. It finally took two trucks. It was fun to watch.

A LOCAL PLACE

When the mayor welcomed us to town, she mentioned her husband owned a restaurant, so, in order to help the mayor, we went out to eat. We had a delicious steak sandwich. Here's the Little Big Horn Cattle Co.

MUD, MUD AND MORE MUD

As I mentioned, we got a lot of rain, which became a real problem by the end of the week. The tow trucks were really busy. Here's our neighbor to the right-he slowed down when his front wheels were on the road-that was a mistake!



Here he's being towed.

The fairgrounds will need some repairs.

Our neighbor on the left was rather creative-he used rubber mats-and he made it.

Some of the men panicked on Wednesday night and tried to leave early-they boondocked in the parking lots.

ESCAPADE IN SEDALIA, MO

For the past week we've been at the Escapees rally in Sedalia, MO, where it rained all but one day. Otherwise, it was fun and informative. The entertainment in the evening was pretty good, especially the New Odyssey-3 guys who played 30 instruments. One of them was pretty funny and here he's playing his Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Bands coat and shoes which were filled with cymbals. Quite amazing!

One night we saw the Brett Family from Branson, but we had seen them about a year ago, so some of it was the same. The next night we went to bingo and probably because Al Ludeking wasn't along-I won one game. We opted to skip the Ham-O-Rama, the members talent show. We also learned a lot from the various seminars we attended. Here are Jim and Chris Guld, better known as the Geeks On Tour, teaching about Picasa, which is the photo program we use.

Barbara Nuehring, (on the left), gave a talk on digitizing your genealogy information. It was very helpful. We'll be lucky to have her and Lee and Connie and Peter Bradish along at the Genie rally-they have a wealth of information and are very willing to share.

Mike and Terri Church are the authors of seven travel books for campers. They give great information and are very nice. We won one of their books, and bought two more.

Closing ceremonies were Thursday afternoon where we found out there were over 1300 people there. They gave away a trip worth $3700, and one of our genealogy group won it. I'm sure we'll hear more about it at the rally.