Day 12: April 28, 2018
Tour and Banquet

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This was tour day. The bus arrived on schedule, and we were all aboard and rolling at 8:30.

And we avoided being held up for the first half hour but our luck came to and end as we pulled up to the big red gas pump at King City. Said their names were Frank and Jesse James, and I don't know why you'd lie about a thing like that. Having been here just two days ago, I didn't take many pictures, but did take a few as I wondered just who David and Morgan were and whether they had been and gone or were yet to come.

The tourists are here! This is Mark Jensen's place which I learned would be part of the bus tour when I stopped by on Thursday. Even though this was another repeat, I still found "new" things to photograph. I'd photographed the eagle on Thursday but only got silhouettes because of the high sun. Today was better. The bugmobile was in some of the pictures I took Thursday but none were portraits and I didn't use them anyway. The "functioning" (it has light bulbs for spark plugs) V6 was tucked away inside on Thursday.

The Toot-Toot is a near perfect lunch stop for a group. Great food, atmosphere, and slogan.

Stan Hendricks put together a great tour and handled the bulk of the narration. He did get some help from John Ross and I had a chance to snap a picture of both when Stan stood up to introduce John.

The main target of this stop was the Amish Country Store. I wasn't much interested in the crafts and food stuffs available, and only slightly more interested in the large corporate Maid-Rite restaurant. About the only thing that pulled my attention much at all were some hints at Maid-Rite history hanging on the wall. I snapped pictures of a couple of pictures: #1, #2.

Taking pictures from a bus, through fellow passengers and dirty windows, usually isn't very fruitful so I don't often bother. Today I did grab shots of a couple of old culverts and an abandoned bridge that I hadn't even noticed on Thursday and which were fairly far away.

The tour's last stop was at the Cameron Depot Museum. This is in Stan's home territory and he really enjoyed showing it off. There are some nice Jefferson Highway exhibits along with a camera that's too big for Captain Kangaroo's pockets and doesn't even support texting, and some articles about Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth both passing through this depot while traveling on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad.

Outside there is a large water bowl that once sat in the center of town at the intersection of the Jefferson Highway and the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway. It was here that we somehow got everyone to stand still long enough for a picture.


The conference ending banquet took place at the Pony Express Museum. The big motel sign is on the grounds of the museum and we were told that it was on a timer but the schedule was unknown. A few of us kept popping out to see if it was lit but it was still dark when we left. The huge mural is in the museum parking lot. We got a guided tour of the museum but I think the most impressive thing about it is that fact that it is in the actual Pony Express stables. The staged scene of the first Pony Express ride is at the very location where it actually occurred.

Dick Van Laar initially handled the pre-banquet entertainment solo, but, in time, he was joined by one famous vocalist after another.

Though certainly deserving, Lyell Henry did not receive the evening's first award. He accepted the association's big expression of gratitude on behalf of Paul Walker who handles the newsletter design and layout. The next awards went to David Stearns for his mapping work and other contributions and to Theresa Russell for her work on the association's website. I'm not entirely sure what Glenn had in mind as he presented an award to Loring Miller, but I do know that no one was hurt. Mike Curtis received an award for his efforts in producing a map of the entire Jefferson Highway and John Ross was awarded for his work in preparing this year's conference.

Just ahead of Mike receiving his award for creating the map, I got one for using it. I protested that I hadn't yet made it even half way on my end-to-end drive, but Glenn expressed confidence and pointed out that the ambassador award simply obligated me to complete the drive.


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