We’ve had a good time at the Escapee Escapade held at the Missouri State Fairgrounds. Just being able to stay at the beautiful fairgrounds was a highlight.
Even Floriculture superintendent has her own office building.
The grounds were very pretty probably because there is a greenhouse right on the grounds. The other highlight was the ‘40 & 8’ Merci Boxcar, just like the one we placed a cache near in Fresno. Remember each state was given one of these boxcars filled with presents of gratitude from the people of France following our thousands of gifts of food, clothes, shoes and other necessities following WWII.
The Escapade started officially on Sunday with Registration in the Hospitality Room. This room was used for many activities, free WIFI, the mail room, the Escapee office, morning breakfasts, a Chili Cook-off, message boards, social time and more. This was the hub of actives.
We went to several seminars including one on Geocaching taught by Tom Abernethy. Tom did a nice job explaining geocaching to the beginners and some experienced cachers too. The next day we were able to talk to many attendees at an activity called The Row. This is an opportunity for the many Birds of Feather (BOF) groups and Chapters as well as Co-Op Parks to meet and explain what their club is all about and when they will be having rallies. We displayed lots of cache containers we had set out at the Gypsy Gathering Rally the week before, our cache bag full of goodies we find helpful in getting a cache, and a video on caching. We signed up 19 new members for our SKP Geocache BOF chapter.
Of course we love finding good places to eat and Sedalia was no exception. One place we ate twice at was the Kehde Barbeque. They have developed a potato dish they call a Society – my favorite. It is a large, very large potato filled with portabella mushrooms, caramelized onions, tons of gooey cheese, BBQ sauce and smoked turkey. Top that with sour cream and that’s a dinner to die for. Another yummy eatery we ate at was Lemaire’s Cajum Catfish & Seafood House. This was the only one I remembered to take a picture.
We also partook of Chinese, Mexican and Mediterranean cuisines. One more mention of food for this blog… Blue Bell Ice Cream!!! We have finally arrived in a state that we can buy BB, and we did.
We did do some geocaching while in Sedalia. On one of our finds we were stopped by a local lady just finishing a 39 mile bike ride on the Missouri State Katy Trail park. After explaining the hobby, she joined us in the hunt and after Tom found the cache, she was raring to sign up for the hobby. We found 4 caches and placed 1 while in Sedalia. If only we were not so busy with a rally.
We sere treated to several nights of entertainment. Yakov Smirnoff put on a funny, entertaining and inspirational show. George Dyer sang the most amazing show tunes, opera, and ballads. We bought 2 of his CD’s. Even the talent show put on by Escapees, the Ham-O-Rama, was pretty darn good. We spent our last night at the rally at a dance. There was ballroom, country western, line dancing and even some crazy dances like YMCA and the hokey pokey.
We did do a little touring of the local area, We drove the back roads to the tiny town of Stover. We stopped to buy some local produce and met the nicest couple and chatted for over an hour. WE just love this part of traveling, meeting local folks. We also drove through the downtown area of Sedalia. We learned at one seminar all about the bawdy side of Sedalia, a town with more prostitutes than almost any other US town. We had to take a picture of one of the brothels now on the National Register of Historic Places
We visited the beautifully restored KATY Depot.
We chatted with the Executive Director, Deborah Biermann, and told her about placing a cache at the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart and asked about the possibility of placing one at this historic location. She agreed. This is the cache site.
This morning we left the fairgrounds and moved a short distance to the Moose Lodge, first 4 nights free.
Tomorrow we drive to Kansas City. We will be traveling with Sharon and Don DelRosario on our way to Albuquerque’s Balloon Fiesta.