Oregon Trail Aug 2016

On July 28th we left home in Michigan to travel to Seattle. Because we were not planning to meet up with our son and his family until Sunday we made the first 4 days a leisure travel time for us.

We stopped in Parke county Indiana the first night so that we could take the covered bridge tour in the area. This county has over 1/2 of the covered bridges still existing for the state. 

We then traveled to Casey Illinois which is the town that state it is the "Little town of Big things". But what we also found is each big thing has a scripture plaque with it.

Dennis found this large mailbox interesting. It is built so that you can climb up into it and deposit your mail in a slot, which then receives a local cancellation.

In the large bid cage we found a place to keep Nancy out of the stores!

We stopped in St Louis and visited the Grant Home Historic site.  We then traveled to Independence, Mo to meet up with our sons family for the rest of the trip. 

At the Truman home in Independence our grandkids found this item hanging on the wall. When you picked it up it would have a voice on it. 

Our son Jason and I helped the kids load their wagon with supplies for going on the trail.

Grandpa and the two grand kids took a break.

In Kansas we visited the old school where the case about segregation and equal treatment took place. 

The Heritage center is where the first registered homestead was filed.

These decorative bales at the heritage center were different, Nancy and Dennis each got one of the kids to stand with us for a picture.

The kids completed their Junior Ranger books and were sworn in.

Because it was the end of the day Caden was asked to help with taking the flag down for the day.

We made an early morning stop at this site. 

And then ended the day with our stop here.

This is our son's family on the top of the bluff.

Because the forts were important to the Oregon trail we made stops at them. 

We stopped at Independence Rock. 

Jason and Caden climbed up on the rock.

This was one of our stops along the way. You cannot see much of the fossil beds but they have a nice visitor center to tell the story.

The trail center has information about the trip that people on the trail experienced.

On the top floor Nancy found a quilt show that she enjoyed.

Our final stop in Oregon was very good as it takes you through the whole trail with what people went through.

Another picture of Dennis and Nancy with the grand kids. This was a very fun week of travel to the west coast. We wanted to stop at Fort Vancouver for the trail end but found out it was closed on Sunday and Monday so we went on to the Seattle area to visit our other son Aaron and his wife Amy.