“Hannibal and Nauvoo”

August 8, 2001, our last official day of playing tourist in Missouri. So, of course the logical stop would be the city of Hannibal, home of Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Huck Finn. Another romantic little town along the Mississippi, full of charm and history.

Ever since I was a kid, after reading the adventures of Tom Sawyer, I wanted to go to Hannibal, see the white-wash fence, take a riverboat ride, explore a cave. Ok, but I knew I couldn’t do the cave, claustrophobia again rears its ugly head.

We still did enough touristy things and then it was time to head on up the road. We were heading to Illinois. Now, I have already shared with you two of my secrets – I can’t hold my liquor and I freak when in any enclosed place. It is time that I reveal a truth about my dear husband Himey.

He hates Illinois.

Shortly after crossing the border, he claimed we got lost. We never got lost, he was just already starting to panic. Then we stopped to buy gas. It was $1.24 when he started pumping (isn’t that hard to believe!), and then the price went down by a penny. He completely blew a gasket when the attendant wouldn’t honor the lower price.

Excuse me, honey, whether fair or not, that amounted to seven cents.

Then he thought we got lost again. Whether we did that time or not, I don’t remember, but that was about when we stumbled on the town of Nauvoo. It is like a Midwestern Williamsburg, only smaller. It was founded by the Mormons before they were persecuted to the point of heading further west to settle in Utah. We didn’t have much time to spend there, but several years later, we did go back for the day (believe it or not, I got Himey to go back to Illinois), so I will share that story when we get to it.

“Looking down and looking up”

The Exotic Animal Paradise, in Springfield, Missouri, is one of those places where you stay in your car and drive through the animal exhibits, buying expensive bags of wafers to feed the deer, ostriches, and camels who stand in front of your car holding you hostage until you give them more treats. During our vacation of 2001, my husband and I arrived at the animal park shortly after they opened at eight am. Our plan was to get there before it got too hot and the animals were all bedded down in the shade somewhere.

Unfortunately for us, but probably lucky for some family of pre-adolescent children, in addition to the many upright animals, we also found a dead burro at the side of the road. We sat in the car staring at the carcass for the longest time making sure it wasn’t still breathing, but the flies hovering around it were pretty much a dead giveaway (sorry for the bad pun).

Halfway through the park was a stopping off place, an area to buy more wafers or purchase a t-shirt, stuffed animal or other random souvenir. We tracked down an employee to report the burro demise. She thanked us, but did not seem terribly surprised by our find.

When we left there, we drove up to St. Louis to see the Gateway Arch. It is really big. I mean, really big. I've seen lots of towers and monuments and things, but this one was really big. We would've taken the ride in the little tiny car inside of the Arch to the top, but just because the Arch is big on the outside, does not mean it is big on the inside. Another revelation about me – I am very claustrophobic.

We did, however, take the riverboat ride, which was all right. At least we were outside in the fresh - and hot and humid - air.

Olive Garden

My husband is going to kill me for writing this. Well, actually I am sure he won’t, instead he will be massively amused. He will shake his head and think, “why does she really want to tell everyone this?”

We were driving all around Missouri that frightfully hot August of 2001. We had been living as cheaply as possible the entire vacation, only visiting free or dirt cheap attractions, eating most of our meals out of the cooler, staying in hotels which offered free continental breakfast. But there in Springfield, after checking into yet another Super 8 motel, we decided it was time to splurge. Himey took me out to eat at the Olive Garden.

Have you been to Olive Garden much? I don’t know about you, but it always seems like my waiter is this young cute male, working his way through college, and he knows exactly how to work me.

“Would either of you like a complimentary glass of our house wine?” he asked, not so innocently. He knew what he was doing. His name was something like Michael or Andrew or Barnaby, not Mike or Andy or Barney.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t drink, maybe a sip of my husband’s cold beer during a cookout or maybe a fancy drink with an umbrella when I am out to eat with my girlfriends. I haven’t had more than three alcoholic beverages in a year since I was this waiter’s age.

“Sure, I’ll try a glass,” I impulsively answered, fielding a shocked look from my husband. He shrugged and ordered a Bloody Mary.

Half-way through our salad and first round of breadsticks, Barnaby offered to refill my wine glass, or perhaps I wanted a mixed drink instead. Well, after one glass of wine, a brandy old-fashioned sounded fantastic, so I ordered one.

By the time Himey was half-way done with his chicken fettuccini and I had made a good dent in my chicken parmigiana, Barnaby returned, asking if we needed another drink. When Himey declined, I was still sober enough to follow suit. Not sober enough however to avoid some more fluttering with the young student.

When the bill, which totaled $33.41 came, Himey asked how much of a tip to leave. “Is five dollars enough?”

“Give him at least a ten,” I nearly slurred my words. And because my husband, the sweet thing that he is, always listens to me, that is what he did. And he has yet to let me hear the end of it.

“Nuclear Babies and Civil War Gunfire”

Carthage, Missouri, turned out to be the finest surprise of the vacation of 2001. Incredibly enough, the Civil War Museum downtown opened at 8:30 am. The next best thing about it was that it was free. My husband Himey and I didn’t think our day could get much better than that. But it did.

After a drive through the historic Park and Oak Hill Cemetaries, we ventured into our next pleasant surprise. Precious Moments Place.

You know those figurines of little children who have big heads, big lost eyes and usually are saying something that makes old ladies go, “awe”? My sister Pat hated them and called them ‘nuclear babies’, because only kids who had been exposed to radiation could possibly look like that. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, well, she always thought they were precious.

I have to admit that I was nearly stunned by the beautiful grounds, the fascinating chapel and the story of the creator, Sam Butcher, a deeply religious man. We again only took in the venues which were free, but could easily imagine returning to spend some serious money and take it all in.

Since we were so close to the border by then, we decided to randomly drive into Arkansas just to say we were there. A good decision. Other than the man at the visitor center who wouldn’t leave Himey alone, our short drive through the northern most section of this southern state turned out, again, surprisingly awesome.

We took the driving tour through Pea Ridge National Military Site. It’s where a civil war battle took place. I can’t remember the whole story and am too lazy right now to look it up on the internet, but it was definitely worth the $4.00 admission charge.

The only downer of the entire day was Branson. I just must totally not get it. We drove through downtown coz we thought we should and –yuck – nothing but crazy traffic and ignorant pedestrians.

So, here’s my question for you all for tonight. Why do people flock to Branson, Missouri? The shows, I suppose, but – um, really?

“Into Missouri”

After a day in Iowa, at the start of our 2001 vacation, my husband and I checked into the Super 8 motel in St. Joseph, Missouri. Following an uneventful evening, we rose early the next morning, a Sunday, and thought we would take in the sites of St. Joseph. I especially wanted to see the Pony Express Museum, the Pony Express having been yet another romantic time in our country’s history.

Alas, it was not to be. I will admit perhaps it was my poor planning, but it wasn’t until one pm that anything much opened on a Sunday in the city of St. Joseph, Missouri. We sucked it up and just drove on down the road to Kearney.

Kearney boasts the birthplace of Jesse James, so naturally his home and birthplace are open for tours and includes an adjacent museum which shows off all sorts of artifacts from his boots to the lid of his original coffin. Of course, the general feeling throughout the grounds was that he really hadn’t been such a bad guy and that he got a bum rap. I didn’t buy it, but the log cabin he was born in and the addition purchased by his mother from the Sears catalog in 1893 were still cool to go through.

Next stop was Independence and the Truman Museum and Library, followed by a tour of the Harry S. Truman Home. Very neat. Mr. Truman had been my father-in-law’s favorite president, so my husband was pretty psyched by the whole thing. And that’s what matters most sometimes – when your spouse is psyched about something.

Trivia question for you. That night we stayed in a small town which seemed to have fallen right out of a Frank Capra movie. This city was the hometown of Robert Heinlein. What is the name of the town? And, please, without looking this one up, do you even know who Robert Heinlein was (my husband said at the time that he had never heard of him)?

Romantic Iowa

August of 2001 the family vacation turned into the parent’s vacation. My husband and I dumped the kids at their dad’s in South Dakota and headed to Missouri. Of course, that meant driving through Iowa. Now, I know what you are thinking, Iowa nothing but cornfields. Au contraire.

I think that someday I would like to take my entire one week’s vacation in Iowa. Honestly. That one day that we had to drive through the state we visited a tiny house on a street corner in the town of Winterset, the home was the birthplace of Marion Morrison (aka John Wayne). We drove up this incredibly steep hill in the city park in the middle of Winterset to see Clarks’ Tower, a 25 foot tall tower built in 1926 as a tribute to the first pioneer families in the area. From the top of the tower there were fantastic views of the surrounding countryside.

Of course, the most famous attraction in Madison County would be the covered bridges, thanks to the movie with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. On our first date, Himey and I talked about the book by Robert James Waller and on our next date he loaned me his mother’s copy of the book to read. Who would have ever guessed, back in 1995, that our travels would someday take us to the Bridges of Madison County?

We visited four of the six restored bridges. At one time the county boasted 19 covered bridges. What makes them so romantic? Surely we all thought that before Mr. Waller’s book made these particular bridges famous.

I think it must be the way in which they harken back to a past time, past lives, when things were simpler. When every family was the Waltons, when there was no TV, certainly no internet. When a young man and a young woman, on their first date, would walk down to the stream at the edge of town and wade in the shallow water in the shadow of a covered bridge.

Holliwell Bridge, where we met two women who were visiting all of the covered bridges of Madison County, taking pictures of their three foot tall snowman on each of the bridges.