Unfortunately my plans for what comes next are still in flux
around that familiar acronym, TBD.
One of these days that will change.
Here at home we had a visitor one day a while back: the
second horned toad I’ve ever encountered.
He/she was quite fleet of foot, and certainly lived up to its name. It didn’t spit any blood out of its
eyeballs, though.
Over the Independence Day weekend I took a quick road trip
to St. Louis. My venerable chariot
“El Civ” knocked down 42.8 miles per gallon going and coming, which was
reassuring. It was nice to get
away, and I had some lovely company for the duration. I also espied 43 states’ (and one Canadian province) license
plates, which seemed pretty darn good for the brevity of the journey!
The savior of the Union and 18th President of the
United States figured largely in two of the places we visited. The first was the Ulysses S. GrantNational Historic Site, which was the home of his wife’s family. It was a slave plantation; and-yes-that
issue did create strife with Grant’s in-laws (should come as little
surprise). Across the contemporary
street is the Grant’s Farm facility, which includes the humble cabin U.S.G.
built for his Hardscrabble Farm, as well as some of the herd of Clydesdale
horses. The place is
owned/operated by Anheuser-Busch, and has a bunch of other animals in its
menagerie as well.
The Sandy Creek Covered Bridge was also on the itinerary,
which is just one of four remaining such structures in the state of
Missouri. It turns out covered
bridges were primarily enclosed to protect their wooden truss structures. That practical means just
serendipitously led to a rather picturesque end.
The Mastodon State Historic Site had an interesting museum,
as well as a nice walk down the bluff to the site of the historically
significant Kimmswick Bone Bed. It
was here that not only were a bunch of fossil bones found, but that some Folsom
spear points were found in contact with the bones. This pretty well established the contact between megafauna
(like mastodons and 8-foot-long giant beavers) and early human residents of the neighborhood. Cool, huh?
On the way home I made a quick stop in Jefferson City to
stroll through the state capitol building and Missouri State Museum
therein. I would have gone through
the buildings down at the Jefferson Landing site at the bottom of the hill on
the Missouri River, but they were closed on Mondays. At least I got to see an Amtrak train arrive and depart from
the little station there. It was
cool to see one of the multitude of places the Corps of Discovery, headed by
Lewis and Clark, passed on their way to/from the Pacific.
"The world is old, and no doubt plenty of people have lived in it and been forgotten."~Allan's Wife by H. Rider Haggard
