Traveling with Judy and Harry: Staying Put with Buffalo Bill

May 2, 2010
We are mighty sick of seeing the same storm stuck in place and being a factor in our planning of our trip home for what seems like the umpteenth day lurking there as a barrier in our way. We felt it was prudent not to travel when tornadoes and flooding were predicted for the area. There was serious flooding on the roads overnight in Tennessee and tornadoes farther south so we opted to stay another day in Davenport and hope it would move out of our way (and also, of course, give the residents of those areas some relief from the devastation they were experiencing). We are perfectly safe so certainly shouldn't be complaining .

We listened to a Recorded Book on our trip west entitled, "Eiffel's Tower" by Jill Jonnes about the building of the tower for the World's Fair in Paris in 1889. The personalities that visited or performed at the fair were all included and it covered the time period from the planning until the closing of the fair after it's 6 month run and even a bit beyond. We found it very interesting as it talked about Gustav Eiffel and his difficulties and genius in the engineering and erection of what was then and for quite a time afterward the tallest structure in the world. Many people were discussed including Thomas Edison, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody among many others so when we saw that there was a Buffalo Bill Museum in nearby LeClaire we decided to visit it. It seems he was born in LeClaire but left for Kansas with his family while a boy. The museum was mostly a town museum with some Cody memorabilia included. The main museum for studying the man is in Cody, Wyoming but we didn't travel that far north. He was quite a showman moving Native Americans, cowboys, sharpshooters and many horses and bison to Europe for his sold out shows there which ran for many months in Paris and also traveled from place to place throughout Europe.