Abilene or Bust

On Sunday we took "an adventure", as Doug would say.

The Adventurers: Phil, Janel, Doug, Me
The Adventure Location: Abilene, KS -- more specifically The Eisenhower Library and Museum

I know you all are thinking we are wild people. We know excitement when we see it. And this was it. This was a trip that both Doug and Phil were sooooo very excited about. Doug brought it up and it happened to be on Phil's list of places to visit. So it was a done deal.

I discovered on this trip what an absolutely horrible Kansan I truly am. Not lyin'. I've been a Kansan for 27 1/2 years and never been to this place and I didn't realize all the things that Eisenhower did. I think I felt a bit prouder of my state after I got done here.

Anyway, here's a little rundown of the funny things of this trip. Not tons, but there were definitely some giggles.

We first stopped at the Russell Stover Chocolate Factory...seriously can't pass up buying 3 lbs of chocolate for $10 and testing out some of that gloriousness. We had an idea of where to eat for lunch since I had done some research before. The only problem is I couldn't remember the name of it. All I knew is that it was in an old farmhouse and it was good country cookin' (AKA fried). The iPhone wasn't working out so well being in the Middle of Nowhere, KS (apparently "more bars in more places" doesn't include Abilene, KS). Doug decided to ask the lady at the cash register where to eat since she appeared to be a native and surely she would recommend this place since it had awesome reviews online. So, Doug asks...the lady responds, "I would highly recommend the bowling alley." 

 

We all kind of looked at each other like, "Is this a town inside joke?" But no she was serious. It's the bowling alley behind the Super 8. Thankfully around that time I got a bar of service on Doug's phone and found the name of the place we wanted. We sadly decided to not eat at the bowling alley and went with Mr. K's Farmhouse where we got a salad a full fledged fried meal, dessert and a drink for 8.95.

 

As you can imagine with two couples on a trip there is bound to be some hand holding going on. What more romantic place to hold hands than in a presidential museum that also focuses a lot on WWII? I mean really. Janel and I were standing together admiring some type of memorabilia. Doug and Phil were standing behind us looking at something else. Apparently Phil didn't get the memo that Janel was over by me and Doug was actually by Phil. I guess something about the war or the bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower made Phil have that fuzzy feeling inside so he reached out to hold "Janel's" hand. He waited and waited for her to take it. When he turned around to find out why she hadn't had the same feelings as him about Eisenhower's bust he found Doug just staring at him funny. At this point Janel and I turned around and caught the "Awkward Moose Moment", Phil turning bright red, denying it up and down, and Doug laughing at him hysterically. I think people thought we were weird. Sorry we couldn't get them to reenact this so no pics.

The boys like to read...everything. Janel and I like to look at pretty dresses and jewelry. There was a lot more reading than pretty dresses and jewelry. The boys are going to take us shopping where there isn't much reading...they just don't know it yet.

I think the highlight of the boys' day was looking at the solar panels for the water tanks.

Must be an engineer thing. Notice Janel and I didn't venture over there. We don't understand their language when they go into engineer mode.

There weren't very many people there, especially around closing time so we didn't have any pics of the four of us together. We had me and Doug:

And we had Phil and Janel:

We finally found a rather elderly security guard who was kind enough to attempt my camera. I handed it to him and showed him how to use it and he said, "Ooooo is this one of those digital cameras? My grandkids play with these things!" He struggled for a while and didn't really use the zoom to help frame the picture or he just moved from right to left to front to back. The first pic didn't turn out so well.

Poor President Eisenhower's head. So Doug had him try again and it was a success.

We were so excited to be able to spend this day with our friends!

Pics from here , here