The Journey is the Thing: Day 24

Dateline: July 10, 2014; Carthage, MO

We got up early and headed for Carthage, MO. Route 66 on this leg was charming. Many buildings had been "rocked" - covered with field stone. It is an interesting local look.

Sometimes the stone was rough as above but sometimes it was flat as below.

Our FMC Rally was held at Red Oak II, a community created to restore a sense of the past, specifically the past that artist, Lowell Davis, enjoyed as a boy in a small Missouri town called Red Oak. Our friend, and host for this rally, Jim Woestman has been coming to rallies on the west coast for years and telling us about Red Oak II. We were really excited to get our first glimpses of it. Evidently, Lowell Davis had bought up old, abandoned buildings from his home town (which had become a virtual ghost town) and moved them, restored them, and created this amazing place out of a cornfield near Carthage.

Here are some of the buildings on one of the roads into Red Oak II. All of these were moved here and restored. There are only a couple of buildings that were built from the ground up; the vast majority were moved here.

You can see some FMC's at Jim's place down there. We got settled into our spot - with full hookups! We set up our site and set out to reconnect with old friends. The afternoon was spent sipping drinks, catching up, and enjoying (?) the humid Missouri afternoon!

At dinner, Greg and I went out to see what we could find to eat in Carthage. We ended up at a placed called Lucky J's Arena and Steakhouse, which offers great food and entertainment in the form of a horse arena. We sat at a bar that looked out over the horse arena. There was a show that weekend (it was a Thursday night) and people were warming up their horses and getting them ready for the show and used to the arena. Barney started up a conversation with a group at the table behind us and Jim ended up taking us out to see his champion halter class quarter horse, Di (her registered name is Golden Maserati). She was beautiful! Loved walking out through the barns to see her and then going in to eat our dinners!

Jim and Di

The view from our table, watching the horses get ready for the show tomorrow.

When we got back to Red Oak II, everyone was hanging out talking. There was a rowdy kid table playing card games. There were groups of grownups talking and sipping wine. The air was rich and full of the sound of frogs and cicadas. Truly a magical place.

Jim's white guest house (under construction still) was moved in from Carthage and is being restored. Our spot was behind it. There were lots of other FMC's set up around it. as well. The roofline in the background was an old motel that was moved to the site and restored as well. People who didn't have FMCs with them (they don't always make the journey, folks!) could stay in the motel. Jim was nice enough to let Gage and Ruth have a room each. After a month on the road with the folks, they were thrilled to have their own air conditioned spaces to be ALONE! They did still come out and socialize . . . some.