St. Joe, MO

Day 1 we drove from St. Louis to St. Joseph, Missouri. We stopped at the AOK campground. Caretakers Rhonda and Scott helped us hook up since it was our first time EVER. I don't know if you've ever seen RV, but if you have you know why we were scared.

We grilled chicken on the barbecue and cooked potatoes on our stove in Gypsy. Food always tastes better when you're on the road. Why is that?

Sunday we took a trek back into the city of St. Joe and went through the Pony Express Museum. I've been fascinated by the Pony Express since grade school so this was a huge treat for me. Fascination or not, sometime in my grade school experience I missed the fact that the Pony Express only operated for 18 months, then went bankrupt and completely out of business after the telegraph came along. Still, I love creative visionaries who think these sorts of innovations up. With a relay of horses and riders mail and newspapers could make it from mid-Missouri to San Francisco in 10 days. The riders switched horses at Pony Express stations every 10 miles or so, rode for a total of 100 miles, then handed things over to a new rider. In 18 months only one rider died--shot through by three Indian arrows.

The original RV. Gypsy is far more comfortable.

Jesse James' house behind us

We also drove past Jesse James' house where he was shot and killed. Didn't go in because I was too cheap to pay to see the bullet hole in the wall.

We made one more stop in St. Joe…The Glore Psychiatric Museum. This place is listed on the list of 100 places you should see before you die. It's a doozy. They've accumulated items and tell the history of psychiatric treatment over the last 7500 years. They also have the 130-year history of the "State Lunatic Asylum No. 2" in St. Joseph.

In a nutshell, we learned that psychiatric treatments evolved by trial and error:

1st psychiatrist:
"Hmmm…I wonder if spraying a crazy-acting person with cold water will make him well?"

2nd psychiatrist: "Let's try it!"

St. Joe is one of those pretty, polite and friendly, mid-size midwestern towns. Stately old homes, plus new subdivisions. We liked it. There's lots of interesting free speech in St. Joe. Signs in people's yards calling local politicians names, the side of a building painted with a rant against a proposed smoking ban, funny marquee signs on businesses and churches.

The people welcomed us into Iowa

The rest of the drive to Omaha was pretty uneventful, except when the microwave door flew open and the round glass plate inside that you put things on missiled out of there and crashed on our floor. Scared us out of our wits. "No worries," our RV company said. We can get a new one if we want at Walmart and they'll reimburse us.  I'm just glad one of us wasn't hit in the head with this microfrisbee.

Eventually we crossed into Nebraska. It's always a cool feeling to see my old hometown. I like it a lot. In some ways I like it more now than when I lived there. My friend from as far back as I can remember, Susan and our mutual friend Danny met us in Omaha for dinner. We all got buzzed drinking too much coffee and telling stories. We made plans to spend all day Tuesday showing John around the Big O.

Like the song says, "There's No Place Like Nebraska"

Kathryn