Road Trip to Bethany, MO and Back to Coffeyville, KS ~ Day 2

Thursday, 5/23 ~ woke to grey skies and threats of rain.  Since our business with D & P was finished for the time being we decided to take a leisurely trip back to Coffeyville.

First stop was to get gas and look who was filling up across from us.

We love seeing old cars and how they travel.

We decided to take the roundabout way to get back to Coffeyville.

We both love to read books about the Amish and found a little Amish/Mennonite community that was sort of on our way home.  Well not really, but we were on a road trip right :)

We headed off to Jamesport, MO

These are the sights along the road to Jamesport.

We love all the purple flowers along the way, old barns and crazy bouncy roads.  Even ran into a little construction...the guy holding the sign was sitting in his truck when we pulled up.  We said hi as we were passing and he said it was too cold to be standing outside :)  One of the things we really enjoyed was seeing the different fields and corn coming up, the perfect rows and this amazingly huge tree that from a distance looked like a person checking out the happenings along the road.

And then we got into the outskirts of the Amish/Mennonite community of Jamesport.  Anytime we see a Paint we comment and think about our friends Al & Selma and the story of their little foal that was the paint that ain't.  Aren't the white barns and houses beautiful along the green of the fields and the blue skies.

We arrived at Jamesport around 11 a.m. so after walking around a bit we decided to grab some lunch at Gingerich Family Restaurant.  Jamesport has a sign (red one) with the annual yearly activities...we are hoping to attend one of their weekends in the future.  There is a sweet little hotel, Jamesport Inn that would be perfect to spend a weekend at and touring around the area.  We laughed when we saw the sign "No Hitching"  and we did see a few buggy's coming into town as we were leaving.

We saw lots of posters for a birding event coming up Memorial Day Weekend.  The farm pictured below was going to be lowering the bird houses/nests every hour on the hour so people could see the baby birds and the nests they call home.  During our drive we saw lots of gourd style bird houses.

More of the country side and Amish homesteads.  The picture in the middle was a home where the Amish were gathering for some type of meeting/event.  Must have been about 10 to 12 buggies there.  One thing we noticed as we were driving around the little Amish children would smile, wave and then quickly turn and hide their faces.

This group of pictures is of the Flory Creamery.  It is run by the Flory family, a Mennonite family.  We met a couple who were visiting the US from Russia inside the little store.  It was fun to talk with them as Ron shared about his father and his family escaping out of Siberia in 1928 near Harbin, China.  The gal said she knew exactly where Ron was talking about.  As we pulled in we saw the chicken house and where the calves are kept.  Ron enjoyed checking out some of their farm equipment.  I noticed the old fashioned merry-go-round in the front yard.  We enjoyed chatting with the young girl running the store, sampling about 12 different kinds of cheeses and of course buying a few packages.  The one thing they didn't have was curds :(  maybe next time.  I told Ron if we lived in a sticks n bricks home I would love one of the rocking chairs pictured in the bottom corner below.

As we continued on our drive we saw some interesting parks, an old cemetery began in the mid 1800's and drove over some roads that were nothing more than ruts in the ground :)  At one point we had to laugh as we had made a full circle and traveled only about 30 miles (if we had gone in a straight line) from where we crossed the day before in Cameron, MO but we had actually driven over 125 miles :)

And then it was time to find a place to stay for the night.  We had gone from Bethany, MO to Jamesport, MO through Cameron, MO, and St. Joseph's and crossed over into Kansas but backtracked about 10 miles to Platte City, MO and stayed at the Best Western where we had a much better stay than the night before.

Stay tuned for Day 3 of our Road Trip to Bethany, MO and back to Coffeyville, KS.