the G sides

I got to go with Cooper this week on a field trip!! I love field trips. And this one would rank in the top 5 of all time.

There was a brother that worked for his dad at the family owned HVAC company. At one particular service call, he learned that there were over 100 steamboats that sunk on the Missouri River between St. Louis and Omaha. Talking with his other brother and dad about it, they decided it would be cool to find one of these ships, dig it up, sell the stuff from it and do it again. A treasure hunt in the middle of Kansas.

Here is one of the brothers. He was at the museum this day and he told us the story of how they found it (45 feet deep in the middle of a corn field) and what they found.

As they dug the stuff up – they quickly realized that they had found a fully loaded boat from 1853. It was in essence a time capsule of life before the Civil War. They knew that couldn’t sell all this stuff. It had to go into a museum. So they built their own.

The artifacts are amazingly preserved. Plates, shoes, boots, saddles, guns, knives, dolls, over 200 tons of stuff – basically looking at what Wal-mart would have stocked in 1852.

After the Steamboat Arabia, we headed to Kaleidoscope in Crown Center. It was awesome as well. Basically it was a bunch of creative stations that they turned the students loose to experiment and explore with. I would love to have a space like this at church.

Good time. I love hanging out with Coop. I’m glad he still thinks I’m cool enough to hang out with.