A Steaming Adventure!

What month is it?  What day?  I seem to have lost track.  It must be the end of July or the beginning of August the way things feel outside!  The pool is 88 degrees, the air is thick and muggy, and it is just plain hot!  Oh, but it is just the beginning of JUNE!  Wow this could be a long summer…  Hope that we have many more adventures like today to help it pass all the more quickly.

What to do on a sultry summer day?????  Go on an adventure of course!  Today’s adventure was certainly a steamy one.  (Tee Hee)  Want to take a guess as to what we went to see today?  Need a couple of hints?  Well, lets see what we can come up with…

Still need a few more hints?  No problem!!!! 

 

Surely you have guessed by now.  We went to see a train today!!!!!!  But not just any ole’ train…  This was a massive steam engine that was produced in 1944.  The Union Pacific steam locomotive No. 844 was on display in Cape Girardeau today.  Cape Girardeau is one of several display stops that the steam engine will make as it continues its excursion from Cheyenne, WY to Little Rock, AR and back again.  What a cool sight for all of us!

Yep, you could walk right up to it, touch it, crane your neck to see the top.  We were all in AWE!  This thing was absolutely MASSIVE!!!!!!!!!

We got to Cape right at the beginning of the official start time for the display today.  So glad we did!  There were a lot of people around already, and more and more folks coming in by the time we left.  An added bonus…  We got to ride on one of the university shuttle busses.  TanMan wasn’t so sure about that at first and really did not want to get on that bus with strange people and a guy driving that he did not know!  By the time we took our return bus to the van, he was loving it though.   

We walked from the front of the engine all the way to the end of the last car and back again.  You can see the structure behind the steam engine.  Added bonus number two…  The mighty Mississippi was directly behind the train.  We walked under the big new bridge that crosses the Mississippi from Cape Girardeau into Illinois.  With all the recent flooding Braden has been infatuated by the river, so he was almost excited about this as the train.

 

After a short break to check out the river and watch a barge go past and under the bridge, we were all ready to go again.

 

 

There was so much to take in, the boys just couldn’t decide what to pay attention to.  Obviously they were not too concerned with me at all.  The are getting used to me taking tons of pictures and usually just ignore me and my camera.  =)  Look at how huge those wheels are!

Massive chains, wheels, and so many parts!  One guy commented, "…if something were to go wrong, where would you even start?”   Good point.  Again we were just awed by the size of the engine.  There were several cars along with the engines.  One car was set up with souvenir sales, but that was the only car open for people to go into.  The rest of the cars were for the crew that travels with the train.  This particular excursion lasts for about 5 weeks.  They left Cheyenne, WY on May 27th and are scheduled to return on July 2nd or 3rd. 

 

After checking out the train for a while, we took the shuttle bus back to the van, took a drive across the Mississippi river and back again, and then we spent most of the rest of the day in Cape shopping, before we came home to let the boys get in the pool for the first time this summer.  The whole family had a great time!!!!!!