Weekend in Kansas City

This past weekend was a trip to the Kansas City area to visit family and celebrate the birthday of our four year old grandson.

On the way we stopped at a McDonalds for coffee and found another of the  tables that light up as you place pressure on the table top. Wesley and Mandy had a good time trying it out.

Betsy had the house decorated for the birthday party and face painting was in full swing.

Birthday Boy with Spider man face paint  mask

Cousins with face paint

Betsy did an awesome job with the Captain America cake

One of the gifts were "Hulk Hands" which were fun for everyone.

Grrrr!

 

Greta at the park riding the wagon and "holding" the reins

We made a trip to IKEA which was a first for Mandy

 

While there I saw this book on display and later found the reviews are quite good. I may have to add it to the library.

 

My girls...

Lunch at McDonalds

Salida Colorado

We stopped for lunch in Salida, Colorado and found these three vehicles in the parking lot. Two were heavily disguised with graphics intended to prevent identification, but the third was a new Chevrolet Volt. This is the new body style.

They must be doing high altitude testing.

If they are anywhere as nice as the Volt we had they will be great cars. We drove our 2012 Volt thru the mountains and found we generated enough battery charge going down the mountain passes to get us hundreds of miles on very little gasoline.

Pretty hard to identify this vehicle with this graphic scheme

This one is easier, especially where it says "Volt"

All three test vehicles

 Inside the McDonald's was this table where patrons could move their hands and turn on and off various lights projected on the table. That was fun to watch.

Breaking A Trail

 We decided to make the trip to the cottage and see how it fared over the winter. We drove out in our 4x4 Jeep hauling a trailer with two snowmobiles. We made it as far as the entrance to the road up to the cottage and found it had not been plowed all winter and the snow was rather deep. 

We drove in early in the morning while the roads were all still frozen and had not turned to mud by the rapidly melting snow.

 We decided to make the 1/2 mile trek to the cottage using snow shoes so we didn't sink thru the snow. Found out later it was thigh deep in most places. Also turns out that is much too deep for the snowmobiles we brought.

This is as close as we could get and find a place to park

Our first effort with snow shoes. They are sized by the weight of the user. Mine are on the left

The snow shoes spread your weight over a larger area and keep you from sinking in deep snow. Right here Julie is over about 24 inches of snow

We left the tractor under a tarp and hooked to a snow blower. Once uncovered we started it and started blowing the snow that encased the tractor and eventually cleared the drive and the road to the cottage

Many hours of snow blowing and plowing made travel possible.

The deck was pretty deep with snow and took a while to clear.

Eventually we got it clear enough to walk around and see the driveway

Before and after

The birds paid great attention to our arrival as they know they get fed. The crow came to the window  and '"cawwed" at us until we put out the food. They are there pretty much all day long chowing down.

A Bit of Everything

We've been out of pocket a bit and somewhat lax about getting the blog updated. This is because our tenants moved out and we've spent the better part of two weeks cleaning, painting and fixing the home in preparation for the next tenants. 

This gives us the chance to eat out a lot and try different restaurants. The Brick House in Lindsborg, KS is the home to great burgers and pizza.

Julie at the Brickhouse. It is a cleverly converted former gas station

My burger was basically a Reuben sandwich with a beef patty - really good!

Julie had the Big MC which was also very tasty

 I was at the local Polaris dealer to get some parts and found this sitting outside. Based on watching it drive off I'd say it is REALLY fast! It is called the Polaris slingshot. Promotional video can be found at http://www.polaris.com/en-us/slingshot

I think they are going for a younger demographic than me based on the video but it is quite the design solution nevertheless.

The local model railroad club brought in a talented group of modelers for the yearly train show.  Steve Weidner does fantastic work with scale figures and creates little scenes that tell a story. He and  Mark Fisher have modules they display showing their work.

 I don't know who built this model but am very impressed with the skill of the model making as well as the story being told. I have a friend who posts modelling work and I believe this was shown at an east coast modelling show. I picked it off of his Facebook post.

Pam Todd is another of our talented local modelers made this scene of a wedding with the bride and groom walking to the reception. I like the 'party' feeling.

 My son-in-law Sean recently completed building his 3-D printer. I got a chance to watch it in action with the build of a 1/48th actual size oil drum for my model railroad. We downloaded an oil drum file from the website www.thingiverse.com and scaled it correctly and then sent it to the printer. 27 minutes later we had an accurate scale oil drum. Great Fun!