Little Rock, Arkansas "THE ROCK"

We're in Little Rock Arkansas for a few days, the first thing that we did was visit MacArthur Park, named of course for General Douglas MacArthur. The Arkansas Military Museum is located here and is housed in Tower Building, which was built as part of the state armory before the Civil War and is the only building from that time that is still standing, it is also the building that the General was born in when it was used as an Officers Quarters.



During WWll, a James Allison worked for the Houston Press, he ended up collecting over 4600 photos that were sent back by war correspondents and that we not used by the paper, about 100 of the photos are on display here and are worth the trip alone.

Bataan Death March



German bombing of London









Versatile Jeep making a creek crossing.

French boy teach the pilots french phrases, click on the pic to see what he's teaching them.






I put this picture of Black Jack Pershing to give you a little history on his nickname, one of his early commands was of the 10th Cavalry in Montana, the Buffalo Soldiers, because of this the cadets back at West Point referred to him as "Nigger Jack" when they were rebuffed for this it was changed to "Black Jack" and that stayed with him the rest of his life. It should be noted the General Black Jack Pershing was very instrumental in getting the black troop into combat rather then doing support operations in the rear.


Since we are Detroit Lions Fans we found this piece of history interesting.


Click to read.








There is a large display that covers everything that went on between MacArthur and Truman, they have a lot of papers that are marked TOP SECRET on display to explain what happen.



We were going to go down to the Riverfront and asked the curator where the best place to eat was, without any hesitation she said "the Clinton Library" she also advised us to tell them when we go in that we were just going to the restaurant and we would not have to pay the entrance fee.



The name of the restaurant is "Forty Two" figure it out.

We both had the Presidential Club Sandwich, the waiter told use the President Bill was the creator of this sandwich and it's what he has every time he stops by. All I can say is that you might not agree with his politics but you will love his sandwich, this was the best sandwich I can recall having. It comes with your choice of fries, fresh fruit or chads.



After lunch we went out back and took a walk along the riverfront to Market Place downtown, they have developed the downtown riverfront into a beautiful park which stretches for about a mile, equipped with trolley cars, bike/hike paths, statues, footbridges across the river and a large Farmers Market with every type restaurant you can think of.




Across the river in North Little Rock is the Submarine Razorback, this is the longest serving submarine, built for the US Navy in WWll, when the Navy retired it they sold it to the Turkey Navy who used it for another 30 or so years and the sold it to the city. It is open for tours and is currently being restored to US Navy standards.



One of the reasons we stopped here was to see another Whispering Giant, this one is on display in Riverfront Park but does not have any information about it, so everybody just looks at it and wonders.


Also found this statue of Revolutionary War Hero Casimir Pulaski, or on second thought it might be Elvis and he's alive in Little Rock, you heard it here first.






Now across the bridge to North Little Rock.

Went to the Arkansas Nation Guard Museum today which is located on base at Camp Robinson. It's funny prior to 911, to get on a military base all you did was drive through the gate and go where ever you wanted, but since then you know have to stop at the gate and show a civilian security officer, not the MP's or Air Police but a civilian security guard, your license, registration and proof of current insurance and they will issue you a pass. No checking the truck of the car or anything like that, I guess if you have current insurance you can't possibly be a terrorist.


The story behind this picture is that as these three jets were returning from a mission in Korea the pilot in the center jet had his oxygen malfunction and his plane was kept rolling over and going into a dive, it would then straighten out for a bit then go into another dive. The two other pilots figured out what was happening and flew to his side, they placed their wings right under his by about 15 inches, this created a wind flow that kept his jet level and in a slight decline. They flew like this for about 30 minutes until the jets were low enough that they did not need the oxygen, the middle pilot came to got control of his jet and they all returned safely bake to base.

The museum covers the Arkansas Guard from 1804 to present and has some very nice displays and a ton of old picture which were great.



The Gatlin gun, invented by Dr Gatlin, he figured that it would end the war faster and save lifes.


The Yeater Collection

A little more Lewis and Clark stuff

We drove over to Cairo, Illinois to visit Fort Defiance, this is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, this is where Lewis and Clark made camp for six days in November of 1803. This is the first time that they are to see the Mississippi River, here Lewis taught Clark how to read Longitudes and Latitudes, this was important since the mouth of the Ohio River begins the 3rd Principal Meridian, what ever that means.
This location has always been important to history as you can read, Click on the picture to read about it.




Here's a panoramic picture I took while standing with my heels in the water right at the confluence.

Click to enlarge

This park was really in terrible shape, it might be due to the recent flooding, but everywhere we walked there were discarded beer cans, bottles and tons of other junk, of course when we left here we drove through the city of Cairo and it wasn't any better.
It's a shame that it's been allowed to get this way, Point Pleasant, Ohio has an area very similar to this, the confluence of the Ohio River and the Kanawha River, the history is almost identical, yet they have a restored Fort filled with historical displays, the town is spotless and filled with tourist.

Meet me in St. Louis

BUSCH STADIUM, Day One
We got into camp and got set up early enough that we had time to drive over to St Louis and spend an hour tying to find a parking place that didn't coast $15.00, we finally found a three hour meter that was open so we grabbed that. After putting a pocket full of quarters in the meter we took off for Busch Stadium to take their tour, we got there at 2 PM and the people were already lining up
for tickets for tonight's game. The tour took just about an hour and
cover the better part of the stadium, we got to go down on to the field (don't even think of
touching the grass), sit in the Cardinals dugout, mess around in the
booth used by the TV announcers. We went into the Cardinals Club dining area, their are 660 green seats right behind home plate and if you have one of these seats you get to eat and drink free in the Cardinal Club, as much as you want until the seventh inning, of course these seats are $14,000 and you must buy a minimum of two. Then they took us to the Champions Club which is similar but the seat are on the second deck and are only $120 per game.
It really is a beautiful stadium, their building a huge complex right across the street where the old stadium was which will be restaurants, shops and condos. Outside the stadium they is a large statute of, who else,
Stan "The Man" Musial, to demonstrate what a great hitter he was the tour guide pointed out that his life time batting average was .336, he hit .336 against both right and left handed pitchers, he also ended his career with the same number of hits on the road as he had at home.

Botanical gardens, Day Two
There are three Interstates that share the bridge crossing the Mississippi, I-70, I-64 & I-55, so as soon as you cross the nightmare begins trying to figure out which lane to be in, which exit or ramp to use to stay on the freeway you want, then just to help you out they have construction on two of the three freeways. We figured that it was going to be a small gardens since it was in the city and that not to many flowers would be in bloom for late September, boy were we wrong. It's Saturday morning and we had
trouble finding a parking spot when we got there, we asked one of the parking attendants why there was such a crowd, and he told us that there were 13 weddings taking place today. Once we got through the main entrance and building and into the garden a little ways it was almost like we were the only ones there, this place was so big it could have handled 5 times the crowd. According to my pedometer we walked three miles and only covered about 60% of the garden, this has turned out to be our new favorite garden and we are already thinking of a return trip during may to see all the spring blooms. This entire garden was Henry Shaw's home and was built for his enjoyment, he ended up deeding the property to the city of St Louis as long as it
remained a garden open to the public.

They have different traveling displays and this time it was a sculpture named Nikkei or something like that, as you can see by the pictures he like his women on the large size. While walking around we came across three of the weddings and a few different areas were there was musical entertainment, when leaving there was a wind quartet in the lobby playing along with some wine tasting. If you like gardens this is an absolute must see, and plan on spending the better part of the day.

Football Sunday Day Three

Rainy Day Four

It's cloudy and it's going to be an all day rain so we just did some junking at the local stores.

The Zoo at Forest Park Day Five
Forest Park is the location of the 1904 World's Fair and still has a few building that remain from the fair, we never got a chance to explore the park it self as the zoo wore us out, the park is about 2 miles long and a mile wide, very big. The zoo is divided into 5 sections, we managed to cover two of them, the Historic Section, which is the original zoo, all the original buildings are here and it has the birds, reptiles and sea lion show. The original open flight house from the 1904 World's Fair is still here and used for the larger birds, cranes, ducks and such so they can fly freely around. The other area we did was called Red Rock and housed mostly African animals, the two best things were the giraffe's lean right over the wall and you can feed them leafs, very up close and personnel. There is a lion that just had 5 cubs a few months ago and they were very, very active, mom tried laying around but the cubs weren't having any of that, they were jumping on her, chewing on an ear or fighting her tail until she would shake them off and start to run away. As she was trotting away one of them leaped up on her back just like an adult would do when attacking an antelope, the mom stopped and fell over on her side just like the antelope would have done, then she gave him a big lick on the face for a job well done. We'll tackle the rest of the zoo next time we're here.




GATEWAY ARCH & MUSEUM Day Six
I first saw the Gateway Arch in 1976 on a motorcycle trip and have wanted to get back her and ride to the top ever since, well I finally made it back. The ride to the top is quiet an experience, the tram that takes you to the top is made up of a number of small, very small cars, they are designed for five people to sit in a space that two people would be uncomfortable in, after a four minute ride you crawl out through the door which is about four feet tall and 18 inches wide to find out that you are on the top of the world. The walls are angled out and have carpet on them so you kind of lean out on them to look out the windows and see that there is nothing between you and the ground over six hundred feet below. it gives you a pretty nice view of the Mississippi River and St Louis. After getting back down to ground level we spent and hour at the Lewis and Clark Museum which is underground of the Arch. Across the freeway and still part of the national Park is the old Courthouse, it has been restored and house's a museum with information on the Dred Scott court case which was held in this very courthouse. Dred Scott and his wife were slaves who sued their owner for their freedom, the local courts awarded them their freedom but when it was appealed to the US Supreme Court it was overturned and they were returned to there owner. It's an interesting story and history that covers about 12 years of their life and has an unusual ending.































River Dubois Day Seven
Easy day today just a ten mile drive to The mouth of the River Dubois, this is where Lewis and Clark made camp, just north of St Louis, for the winter to build up their supplies before they headed up the Mississippi in the spring.
They have a full size model of the keel boat that they used, but it's cut in half right down the center, front to back, to show how they used every little space to pack their supplies. Out back is a reconstructed fort that they built and lived in during the winter. Back to camp to watch the baseball playoffs.

Springfield - Day four

Days 1 - 3 are in post below.

Cathy can't be in a State Capitol without going to the archives just to see what see can find, so that,s where I dropped her off, right after we finished off another "pony" at Charlie Prides Diner (see day two about this). The Capitol Building is a copy of the US Capitol in D.C. except that it is 65 feet taller.





While Cathy was in a windowless building looking up old files I drove over to the Air Combat Museum, it's pretty small but they had a few very rare and expensive planes on display, all of their planes are air ready and can be ready to fly within a hour. This little guy is a two seater, front to back and was used for low level observation flights to scout out the enemies position, my cousin Fred flew one of these in Korean Conflict.


The Corsair is one of my favorites, this ship was flown in Combat in Korea between 1950-1953, its 14 cylinder engine produced over 2300 HP giving it a top speed close to 500 MPH, while burning 80 gallons of fuel an hour. There are only 24 known restored Corsairs and only 12 of those are capable of flight, this is one of those and is flown at least once a month. This plane is valued at $3,000,000.



This is their P-51D Mustang, it is fully restored and flyable, this plane flew escort missions for bombers over Germany. When the Mustang Pilots Association had there last national meeting they voted this plane the most original and best in the country.

They had a few more restored units there and a couple that they were in the process of restoring. a very nice little stop if you're ever in Springfield.