40 Miles Southwest of St. Louis

I just read an earlier blog about arriving in St. Louis. I said southeast of the city. Wrong. We are southwest, which means we are in Missouri, not Illinois.

The park is great, proven by the many campers who came here for Memorial Day weekend. Since I was here by myself, there was no need or motivation to venture out. I enjoyed movies, basketball and sewing. Russell was driving across the Northwest Territory to Niagara Falls and then to Montreal with Kyle. He had never been there before and really did enjoy the trip.

The area is beautiful; rolling hills, trees, rivers. I can understand why the earliest pioneers would leave this area and be put off by the flat plains of the midwest. We are far enough out of the city that we are beyond the suburbs, in the farmlands of Missouri.We are in the area where Louis and Clark planned and provisioned their historic trip. This is where Jesse James hung out before he was so well known. Every hamlet is "historic."

We have ventured into various parts of St. Louis and it's suburbs. I really enjoyed the genealogy libraries and was able to find an address for my great-great-great-great grand parents, 7th at Hickory. I drove there looking for a building that could have been there at the time, 1860. I did find one built in 1818 but further research showed that it was built at that time, but not in that location. I'm sure the founders of The Old Rock House never envisioned a move. Seems the original location flooded in 1840, was stored, block by block, and then rebuilt some decades later at its present spot.

Just like any home, our RV has been in need of some maintenance. I don't know how we always seem to find so much work to do, but we do. Since we are here for a month, it seems like a good time before we start hopping across the plains.

We leave here June 18 and will stay for a night in Rockford, IL, just south of the Wisconsin border. Then we head for Duluth, MN to see Lake Superior. We will be staying right on the Lake at a marina. From there we will swing through North Dakota to South Dakota for Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. There is no time frame yet. We are anxious to see a part of the country we have never been to.