After leaving Big Brutus, we continued westbound on small country roads and eventually arrived in Wichita, Kansas. We knew that a large part of the aviation community that was such a big part of our lives originated in Wichita at several of the civilian aircraft manufacturers.
Cessna, Beech, and Stearman are all airplane manufacturers that had their beginnings in Wichita.
We went to visit the Kansas Aviation Museum in search of some of that history. There were numerous displays depicting the evolution of aviation and we enjoyed our visit.
The Museum is located at the old airport terminal building which also housed the old control tower.
It was a beautiful building that fit your mental image of what old time airline passengers must have experienced at the beginning or end of their first airplane ride. This internet photo shows what it looked like.
Inside were many interesting displays.
They had a beautifully restored Stearman. They found it in a scrap yard.
After bringing it to their restoration hangar, they cleaned and straightened the airframe.
The next step was to find and overhaul an engine.
The final product looked like it just rolled off the assembly line back in 1931.
The control tower at the top of the building gave a great view back to the original Stearman factory, and all around the airport including the static museum displays.
Static Display
When we left Wichita, we headed to Dodge City. When we got there, we realized we were too late in the season and most of the shops were closed.
We walked around and Suzie met Wyatt Earp.
She also saw James Arness who was here because the old TV show Gunsmoke was filmed here.
From Dodge City, we headed on to Grand Junction, Colorado. The drive through the Rockies was beautiful. We lucked out and had dry roadways but a beautiful dusting of snow.
The trip through Colorado was beautiful and put us into Grand Junction in anticipation of going back to the Yampa Spa.
We hope you get a chance to get out there and see some of our great country and we will keep you posted on our travels.
Tom & Suzie
After we left New Orleans, we started working our way in a northwesterly direction, trying to only drive on roads we had never been on before.
We were generally headed toward Wichita, Kansas to see their air museum, but didn't have any type of a formal route planned.
As we drove, Suzie kept checking Roadside America for interesting things to see. Then, out in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, on a little 2-lane highway, she said, "Turn left at the next street".
I did and we wound our way deeper into the local farm country. After a few miles, we drove through the very small town of West Mineral, Kansas and as we popped out of the other side of town, we could see "BRUTUS".
What is Brutus? Brutus is a HUGE Bucyrus-Erie coal mining shovel out in the middle of nowhere.
But wait, why is coal mining equipment in Kansas?
There is lots of coal in Kansas and a lot of other places we don't usually associate with coal.
It turned out that coal used to be a big deal here, and Brutus is a BIG reminder of this.
How BIG?
Pretty big. The little blue dot at the rear of the right rear track is Suzie !!!
This bucket would hold 90 cubic yards . . . enough to fill 3 train cars.
We were able to take a self guided tour of Brutus. Each stop along the tour had a sign explaining what we were seeing.
We thought that was pretty big until we went through the museum after we climbed all over Brutus.
In the museum, we saw a picture from a really big shovel called Big Muskie. Big Muskie isn't with us anymore and was destroyed after it reached the end of its useful life.
Its bucket would lift 220 cubic yards at one time. It must have been something to see and here is a picture of its bucket.
Even though Brutus isn't as big as Big Muskie was, it was still something to see.
Everything about it was HUGE.
This is inside the big machinery room where the motors and generators were located that operated all of the equipment. Behind me you can see the 2 giant winches that were used to raise and lower the boom. They were driven by eight 500 horsepower DC motors that turned the 2 large spools that stored the 800' of 3" cable that raised and lowered the bucket. The cable weighs about 25 pounds per foot.
This shovel was all electric and received its power from the local electrical power grid. 7,200 volts came into the shovel on long extension cords that reached down into the pit to power the shovel.
The shovel had 2 huge 3,500 horsepower electric alternating current motors that operated 2 huge generators that produced direct current electricity which then powered all of the drive motors of the shovel.
The shovel started digging in 1962 and worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 11 years until it was no longer cost effective to mine coal here.
The shovel didn't actually mine the coal. Instead, it removed the top soil which they called overburden. By digging down from 20 to 75 feet, the coal seam would be exposed and then smaller equipment would break up and remove the coal.
Then the hole would be filled back in and the shovel would move on. It traveled at about .22 MPH and over its life dug down to hundreds of miles of coal seams.
There was a 3 man crew that operated the shovel.
An oiler had to oil and grease the machine constantly and that must have been quite a job, considering the size and all of the moving parts.
The ground man worked in the lower section of the machine near the tracks. He was responsible for moving the machine forward and backward as directed by the shovel operator as the excavation moved along the coal seam.
The third crewman was the shovel operator.
In this picture, where Suzie is sitting in the shovel operator's seat, you can see an unfilled portion of the old excavation that was left unfilled so that it could be used for recreation. Now, miles and miles of waterway are all that remain of the mining operation and these lakes are stocked with fish for local fishermen to enjoy.
The machine was just huge. There were 2 sets of tracks on each corner of the machine.
Each one of the track pads weighs 2,200 and there are over 35 pads on each track and the track assembly is over 6' tall.
The machine cost $6.5 million dollars in 1962 and took 11 months to assemble after all of the pieces were brought into the area on 150 train cars.
We enjoyed climbing all over Brutus and then spent quite a bit of time in the museum where we saw a movie about Brutus and the effort that went into saving him from the scrap heap. They also had some great displays on how the mines were operated and the equipment that was used to extract the coal.
Brutus was a great little side trip and is the reason we are taking the back roads in the first place.
Who knew we would find something like this in the middle of nowhere in Kansas.
We will keep looking for more Gems like this and we will keep you posted,
Tom & Suzie
After we did our part in the cleanup at our RV park, we packed up and hit the road for our annual winter drive around the country.
Before we get to that, I need to clean up a loose end that some of you have been asking about.
In the last blogs, I mentioned that we had stored our jetskis and a friend's boat and all of the beach and pool furniture down in a hollowed out spot in the mangrove next to the RV park before we evacuated from Hurricane Irma. I forgot to let you know if they all survived.
Yes, they did all survive with only one casualty. The boat and the jetskis were covered in branches and leaves that blew off of all of the trees that surrounded them. The boat didn't suffer any damage and once Bob and Lynne, its owners, cleaned all of the debris off, they were happy.
The jetskis almost made it. They were also covered with debris.
The only damage was where a branch flew into one of the seats and ripped a big hole before flying away.
I was able to order a factory replacement seat cover from Yamaha and install it myself so everything is nice again.
Before we left the Keys, we winterized the skis and put them in storage at our friend Bruce's boat and lobster yard.
Our first new stop along our route was to visit the National World War II museum in New Orleans.
We spent a whole day walking through the numerous buildings looking at the exhibits.
An interesting exhibit did a very good job of showing just how unprepared the United States was before becoming involved in World War II.
This photo demonstrates the difference in manpower between the United States, Germany and Japan at the beginning of the war.
We also didn't realize how many ships were sunk by the Germans just off our coast in just 7 months in 1942.
One interactive exhibit was really an eye opener. We signed up to go on a combat patrol aboard the USS Tang, the U.S. submarine credited with sinking the most ships during the war.
We were each issued a small I.D. card which represented an actual crewman aboard the submarine.
I was assigned to operate the depth controls, which was the station manned by Fred Sunday on the last patrol of the USS Tang during WW II.
The exhibit was the simulated interior of the submarine with controls and also a large video screen where the ceiling of the submarine would have been so that we could see a periscope view of what was happening on the surface during the final battle that the Tang participated in.
After we entered the simulator, the lights went down to very dim and voices began giving commands over the loud speaker telling the various crew positions what to do. We adjusted the controls to submerge the submarine and Suzie had the assignment to push the button that fired the torpedos.
It was very exciting and scary at the same time as we watched the overhead video and saw ships approaching and then saw our torpedo's track away from our submarine and strike various ships, causing them to sink.
Near the end of the simulation, we only had one torpedo left so the captain was very careful as he lined up for our last shot. He then gave the order to fire and Suzie fired the last torpedo.
This is when it really got real.
Our last torpedo did not run straight and true to the target! It malfunctioned and began to turn.
The turn continued and then, the torpedo hit US and sank us.
Smoke filled the simulator and all the lights dimmed and then went out and it was pitch black in the simulator and was very real. It stayed dark for a long time, long enough for you to really understand what it might feel like to be trapped on the bottom of the ocean with little hope of rescue or survival.
The submarine sank to 180 feet. Then, a Japanese Destroyer started to drop depth charges, which eventually started a fire in the battery compartment of the submarine.
Eventually, the crewmen evacuated to the forward compartment where they were able to open an escape hatch and try to ascend to the surface.
This sinking was the first and only use by actual survivors of a sunken submarine to use the Momsen Lung, a rebreathing device that would allow you to breathe while ascending from the escape hatch.
Of the 87 men on the crew, only 13 were able to escape the submarine and only 9 were recovered by the Japanese ships and later transferred to a POW camp.
This was a real eye opener and just about completed our experience on the Tang.
The lights came on and the simulator was finished and we left the room and went into another room.
There we got to see pictures of all of the crewmen who were on the Tang on it's last mission.
Only the crewman in the lighted photos survived.
We then looked for the crewman that we represented during our simulation and we were both shocked to find that just like that, we would have been dead!!! Very sobering.
This is a list of all of the submarines we lost during WW II and a wall of names of the crewmen lost on those subs.
It was a BIG list!
The Tang was a very sobering experience for both of us and it really demonstrated that in a war, not only did the "bad guys" on the ships that we sank die . . . . . the "good guys" died too.
Maybe this war thing isn't such a good idea!
I guess that isn't a really happy way to end this chapter, but we are trying to remember all of the sacrifices that have been made to get us to where we are today.
More to come soon,
Tom & Suzie
Hurricane Irma is long past now and you may be wondering why you haven't heard from us sooner.
The truth is, we have been kind of busy and now we are going to tell you "The rest of the story".
As soon as the hurricane passed, we started hearing reports of massive damage to many of the islands that make up the Florida Keys as well as damage to parts of the mainland.
There were also reports of continued fuel outages throughout the state so we decided that the best course of action for us to take was to just wait. We were in a safe place and still had electricity and water.
We contacted Jack, our RV park manager, who was now staying with friends near Tampa. He said he was not going back until the electricity and water were turned back on at the RV park. Remember that the temperatures in Marathon at the time were in the mid 90's and with the high humidity, it felt like the mid 100's, so none of us wanted to go back until there was power for air conditioning and water for showers.
We planned on returning to Grassy Key RV Park to help with the repairs and restoration but we were going to wait a bit longer.
That is when Stacey, our fellow work camper and evacuee, told us that she had some friends that lived near the RV park where we were currently staying that were employees at Disney World and had offered to take all of us to Epcot Center for a free visit using their employee privileges. Who could say no to an offer like that so away we went.
Stacey introduced us to Bill and Connie who were very nice people who spent the entire day showing us around Epcot Center at Walt Disney World.
Bill and Connie
Tom, Suzie and Stacey
We spent a very relaxing day walking around the "Wonderful World of Disney" and thanks to Connie and Bill we were able to put the stress of the evacuation and the worry of what we would be going home to behind us for a day.
Even Donald Duck helped comfort Suzie.
Eventually, it was time to return to reality. We continued to watch the news about progress in restoring vital utilities in the Keys and we were also able to monitor the traffic, once locals were allowed back into the Keys. By monitoring various outlets on the internet, we could see horrible traffic jams at the only entrance to the Florida Keys.
You had to show proof of residency to the police before you were allowed back onto the islands and people waited in line for hours before passing through the checkpoint.
We couldn't figure out why they were in such a big hurry to get back into the disaster area before water and power were restored and we couldn't figure out where they were getting their fuel to make the trip.
We waited a few more days.
Finally, we found out that the power had been restored to the area where our RV park is located in Marathon and that water was back on, but that there was a "boil the water before drinking" advisory in effect.
Jack, our RV park manager, told us he was heading back down to inspect the damage and determine if it was safe to turn the power back on into the RV park. We told him we would follow the next day if the power was on.
Jack was able to get the power back on safely so we headed back home after being gone for 15 days.
The trip back was tough. The traffic was heavy and obtaining fuel was still a problem, but we finally left the mainland and started down into the Keys.
As we drove through all of the little communities that make up the Florida Keys, we saw unbelievable devastation. You could see wind blown debris everywhere and trees were blown over everywhere you looked.
The ocean had been violently heaved up onto the island in places and had brought with it tons of sand. There were areas where we could see that had been covered with several feet of sand and that included the roadway.
It almost looked like someone had come through with a snow plow to clear the road. We had traveled this roadway many times and there isn't supposed to be ANY sand here.
As we drove deeper into the Keys, we saw lots of people working, trying to clear away debris enough to gain access to the side streets and homes along the side of the roadway.
We saw truck after truck hauling in heavy equipment to aid in the debris removal and restoration, as well as huge, long bed dump trucks to haul away the debris.
When we got back to our home base, Grassy Key RV Park, we had good news and bad news. The main office building/club house was still there and looked almost untouched, but there was also massive damage to deal with.
This is what the front of the park looked like just before we evacuated. There was an 8' high Silver Buttonwood hedge along the front of the park and a lush jungle-like berm to separate the park from the highway.
This is what it looked like when we got back.
This is the entrance driveway.
This is what the entrance looked like as we drove back in.
The park has a beautiful swimming pool that is surrounded by lush foliage.
This is what we came home to.
There were palm fronds and branches filling the pool and even though it looked like we would see one, there were no alligators in the swampy water.
We were also lucky that the ocean surge was mostly held on the other side of the main road, which kept sand from filling our pool.
We talked to people who had homes directly across the street from us on the ocean side and not only were their homes filled with sand, but their swimming pools were filled with sand, too.
As soon as we got set up in a site, we started working. Even though the clubhouse wasn't damaged, there was still lots of work to do.
Trees were blown over, palm fronds were everywhere, seaweed was clinging to everything where the storm surge had washed sea water from the Atlantic Ocean over the south side of the island, over the roadway and then across our park.
A lot of the plants were so badly damaged from the wind and the salt water that they had to come out. Jack hired a Bobcat to help with that and those guys really did a lot of work that would have just about killed us if we had done it by hand.
You can see in this picture that what was left of the Silver Buttonwoods at the front of the property had been ripped out by the Bobcat.
We still cleaned up all of the debris by hand and . . . . did I mention it was HOT!
Every day the thermometer said it was around 95º but the weatherman said that it felt like 105º. We were sweating like pigs.
How hot was it?? It was so hot it would melt the soles right off of your shoes!!!
Suzie and Stacey cleaning up.
After a few days, stores in Marathon began to open back up and so we had an opportunity to travel through some of the destroyed areas that we hadn't yet had a chance to see.
Several gas station canopies blew down.
Stores improvised as they opened while still cleaning up.
Huge piles of debris were piled along the side of the main highway. The State had a plan to have contractors come in and haul away whatever was stacked along the side of the road for free and, boy, did it get stacked up.
This pile was at least 15' tall and 1/4 mile long and there were stacks like this all along the highway for the entire length of the Florida Keys . . . . . over 100 miles!!!
This was one of the many piles that we made of debris just from our little RV park. The blue board is 10' long.
As we drove down the highway, we were amazed to see entire garages, storage sheds and even one complete house that had been washed from the oceanside of the highway to the Gulf side of the highway, completely intact. They literally floated up off of their foundations blocks in the high storm surge and were then blown hundreds of feet across the highway where they came to rest in the mangroves.
The highway cleanup crews were divided up into three sections with each section being assigned to clean up 1/3 of the 100 mile stretch of debris that was being stacked up.
It took a while for the crews working on the middle Keys where we live to get here, but they finally started hauling the debris away.
The trucks would line up along the side of the road and at the head of the line would be a huge loader that had a big claw hand at the end of a long boom arm and it would start loading the trucks at dawn and wouldn't stop until dusk every night. They worked 7 days a week for weeks hauling the debris away.
You may wonder, what did they do with all of the debris after they loaded it into the trucks.
Well, they transported it to large fields which they used as staging areas to stockpile the debris before they could run it through giant shredders.
This picture shows a very large loader stacking debris. He is just getting started. When the debris was so high that he couldn't stack it any higher, he drove the loader up on top of the stack and then kept stacking it higher. This pile ended up being about 3 stories high.
After the debris got stacked, we weren't sure what was going to happen with it. Now, it looks like they are going to shred the vegetation and building materials and burn it in huge burn piles. They are going to separate out all of the metal and recycle it and all of the refrigeration units like freezers, A/C units and refrigerators will be drained of their freon and then recycled.
This trailer park/RV park got wiped out.
What was left of the trailers were stacked up to be hauled away. Here you see a stack of trailer frames with axles and tires attached.
There was stuff stacked everywhere.
There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the destruction. One house would be destroyed and the one next door looked okay.
We figure the couch must be their break area.
After working for about a week, we had a very hot, calm day which made the Gulf of Mexico look like a glassy lake which made me think it was time to take a break and go for a jetski ride.
I mentioned that to one of the Sea Tow boat salvage guys that was now staying in our RV park and he said that beside all of the wrecked boats that were floating around out there, there were also other hazards like floating refrigerators and freezers that had been washed out of peoples homes and were often floating just below the surface of the water. Wouldn't want to hit one of those, so we left the jetskis on the trailer and went back to work.
This is a capsized boat that went floating by.
Boats moored in the Marathon Harbor didn't fare well. These boats broke loose from their mooring balls and ended up in the mangroves right behind the hospital, which was also destroyed.
The boat yards didn't do any better.
We aren't sure how many airplanes were left at the airport before the storm, but we know that the water was high enough during the storm to leave seaweed packed into the 6' fence that runs around the airport.
Before the storm, all of the foliage around the park was lush and green.
After the 150+ mph winds, all of the lush trees were stripped bare!!
The good news is, we were at the park for 6 weeks after the hurricane, cleaning up, and at the end of that time, all of the trees in the preceding picture had regrown their leaves and were again lush and green. . . . . an amazing natural recovery.
As the RV park cleanup was coming to an end, dump trucks hauled in large loads of rock to replace the rock that got washed away and Mike, the new park Work Camper, used his skill at operating a Bobcat to spread it around while his friend Jill helped him plant over 350 new plants to replace the plants lost to the storm.
We helped repair and replace damaged electrical systems, surveillance cameras and wi-fi hot spots around the park.
We also put together a new frame for the swimming pool equipment cover and I made a new cover.
After 6 weeks of hard work, the park looked better than it did before the hurricane.
We were glad we went back to the RV park after the hurricane to help with the repairs.
When things were finally looking normal at the park again, we packed up and headed out onto the road for our annual winter travel adventure.
I will try to keep you posted on this winter's travels as we discover new things, but it seems like we are always so busy that there is never any time to put the next chapter of the Blog together.
We hope you have Happy Holidays and that you will stay in touch.
Tom & Suzie
