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Bev's Journal A New Page |
| 20 June 2003 Pheasant Acres RV Park St. James, MO On the road at last! We drove through some very scenic Ozark country yesterday afternoon, much of it bordered by the Mark Twain National Forest. Most of my ancestors settled in this part of Missouri in the early 1800’s, arriving from Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee and points east. Some of them still farm the land near Potosi. But all the way west on Highway 8, I kept thinking about what their lives must have been like. It’s beautiful country, but poor farmland. When John & Val were visiting, we took them on the backroads near Hinch where my grandparents had a farm. 40 years ago, the land was cleared for farming; now it’s returned to woodland. And that’s probably as it should be – it’s hard to make a living with subsistence farming. Tourism has helped the area some – several of the premier float rivers – among them the Huzzah and the Courtois (pronounced Cote-a-way) – lure St. Louisans down to this southeastern tip of the Ozarks. We saw a country music show place near here – hope this area doesn’t become a mini-Branson, and stays as natural as possible. What they’ve done to the area around Branson is criminal – Eureka Springs, which used to be a quaint and kind of funky, albeit somewhat rundown town built on a hill, now bristles with new motels and fast food joints and phony ‘hillbilly’ attractions. It’s not as tacky as Branson, but getting there. This is the sort of thing that contributes to that feeling of ‘you can’t go home again’ – everything changes. It’s a beautiful, cool, un-humid morning here and we are just relaxing and enjoying having no commitments and doing our own thing. We were lucky to find a camp that gives Escapees a healthy discount, so we are paying just $10 for a full hookup – good deal! |
| 27 June 2003 Spring Lake Resort Halstead KS It’s a week since my last post, and we’re beginning to feel like that guy who went around with a cloud over his head – we had to stop for two days in Kansas City to have a wheel alignment/axle problem, and now we are stranded in deepest, darkest Kansas waiting for a welder to come and fix a problem which may have been caused by the first repair. On the bright side, we had fun exploring the university town of Lawrence KS on the way here – if you can ignore the weather and the flatness of the terrain, it seems like a great place to live. Book-deprived, we spent part of the afternoon crawling through the used and independent bookstores in town – The Dusty Bookshelf and The Raven – and spent a small fortune! But we are stocked up now – I get that jittery, nervous feeling when I don’t have a book to read! Anyway, we loved the collegiate atmosphere, the availability of health food stores and bookstores – and they’ve obviously made attempts to preserve the charm of the historic downtown area. Lots of tree-lined streets and houses with verandas… We’ve been following US-50 and/or US-56 off and on westward across the state. We stopped yesterday afternoon in Council Grove, the last outpost of western civilization for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail – last place to find hardwoods to fix your axles, buy supplies, etc. There are two famous icons here, and they are both ancient oak trees – Council Oak, so called because in 1825, underneath this oak, the Osage Indians signed a treaty with the US government to allow travelers to pass through their lands – without it, the Santa Fe trail wouldn’t have existed. Score one for the settlers – 0 for the Indians. The other landmark is Post Office Oak, which served as a spot for travelers to leave messages for each other in a cavity at the base of the tree. P.O. Oak died in 1990 at the ripe old age of 270 yrs, but the stump is carefully preserved by the local historical society. |
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