Hanging Out With the Three Musketeers

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

We had a fairly slow take off this morning, just lazing around. We did the scenic tour through the park, taking pictures of some of the colorful trees, and then through the town of Ft Scott, enjoying seeing a lot of the old houses. It is really quite a pretty town.

This is one of the beautiful spots in the park.

We headed out of town, and out of Kansas, on Highway 54, and a few miles later entered Missouri. We stopped for fuel just before heading south on 71, then got on our way.

Our first couple of stops were in Lamar, first at Sonic for a breakfast burrito, then at the Harry S Truman birthplace. Turns out they are closed on Tuesday, so we just went over to look around when a lady came out and offered us the tour of the house.

First things first!

It's a very small home in a small town

The lady saw us when we pulled up, and came over to let us see the house.

Barney checking out the Truman well.

The door is locked. Oh well.

He was actually born in the house, but only lived there for 11 months according to the guide. The home is very small, and furnished the way it would have been then. No running water except for running to the well with buckets. Of course a wood stove or fireplace for cooking, and the outhouse, etc.  It was a very interesting stop.  It is a state owned facility, not national, so there was no parks stamp there, but we enjoyed seeing it.

Our next stop was at the George Washington Carver National Monument just a little way out of Joplin. We got stamps in our books, watched the video, toured the museum, and then took the 3/4 mile walk around the grounds to the Carver home, down in the woods where he played, and by the cemetary where the older Carver's are buried. The museum is very interesting and emphasized how humble a man he was, and how he lived. There are stones along the walkway outside with some of his quotes engraved in them. Very inspirational.

A statue of George

George used to play here as a child.

The Carver's home

His parents are buried here.

Then it was time to head to our destination. We decided to take the freeway east rather than the slower route 60. BIG MISTAKE! We had only gone about 15 miles when we were warned there was an accident ahead, and it took us over an hour to go the next couple of miles. We crept along until we could finally see the cause - an overturned semi with a load of cantaloupe. The other side of the freeway was also blocked because they were transferring the load to another truck. What a mess. They had both sides backed up for miles and miles, and actually closed it down and diverted traffic - which did us no good. But eventually we got past it.

We stopped in a rest area and had sandwiches for lunch, then made one more stop to dump our tanks before finally heading out of town to reach our destination. We are intruding on the peace and quiet surrounding Barney and Betty's daughter, granddaughter and grandson, Aramis, Porthos and Athos. We will hole up here for a couple of weeks, and then we aren't sure what route we will take, but it will definitely be based on parks stamps and an enjoyable trip!

Good night from the Bedrock Bunch. We won't do daily blogs while we are stopped here, but might do an occasional one.
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