Missouri, Oklahoma & Kansas

We headed northwest toward Joplin this morning, stopping at the George Washington Carver National Monument. Carver has quite the life story. He was born a slave, kidnapped as a baby, returned without his mother and raised by his owners, was educated becoming the first African-American to be admitted to what is now Iowa State University, then on to a teaching career at the Tuskeegee Institute where he discovered over three hundred uses for he peanut.




We had lunch at Panera Bread. I love Panera. I really wish we had one close to home because I'd eat there alot!

From Joplin, we crossed into Oklahoma (just to say we did) and headed for the little town of Miami. It was kind of cool to be on the historic Route 66. It's nice that little pieces of it have been preserved since much of it is now under interstates.



From Oklahoma we headed north into Kansas. At this point I discovered we were not far from the Fort Scott National Historic Site, so we made a mad dash to see it before they closed for the day. Luckily, it's not a completely closed site so we could take some photos even after the visitor's center closed. The town of Fort Scott is really cute, but it was pretty much closed down for the day.








Leaving Fort Scott, we circled back to Missouri and chased thunder showers all the way back to Branson. We did stop briefly in the tiny town of Lamar, where we took some photos of President Harry Truman's birthplace. It was closed, but still cool to see. It's always a bit of a shock to see how humble the beginnings of so many of our presidents.




Today was a really good day, but it was long with lots of driving.