All Roads Lead to Roam (Part II)

From St. Charles, MO to Lamar, CO - mostly off Interstate

[This is a continuation of All Roads Lead to Roam - Part I can be found here. ]

Our second day began with a light mist falling over the cobblestone streets of St. Charles. The town was founded in 1765 by fur traders from French Canada and at the time was called “Les Petites Cotes,” or “Little Hills.” It was from here on May 14, 1804, that Lewis and Clark began their epic journey to the Pacific with the Corps of Discovery. The Lewis and Clark Boathouse National Monument documents this journey with a small museum and replicas of the barge and pirogues that the men used to complete the orders President Jefferson had given to his secretary, Merriwether Lewis on the 20^th of June, 1803: “The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course & communication with the water of the Pacific ocean may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.”

The Lewis & Clark (and Seaman) statue in St. Charles is similar to the one on the Mississippi below the Gateway Arch, however, it depicts the men as they were on the day of their departure with smart military uniforms sporting a bicorne hat and epaulets. In contrast, the statue on the Mississippi shows the men in buckskins and moccasins when they returned from the wilderness on September 23, 1806.

After touring the Boathouse and walking along the Missouri, we strapped back in and headed to Florida, Missouri to see the birthplace of Samuel Langhorne Clemens better known to us as Mark Twain. Inspired by the Boathouse, we downloaded “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen Ambrose and listening to that became part of our daily routine…along with searching for Jimmy Johns or Jersey Mikes for lunch. I grew up reading the required Twain: Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper. In my twenties I rediscovered Twain courtesy of a Jimmy Buffet song, “Be Good and You Will be Lonesome.” The title is a quote from Twain in the flyleaf of the terrific “Following the Equator” which was published in 1897. Twain undertook the round-the-world voyage to conduct a speaking tour but also to earn enough money to pay off debts incurred by a series of poor investments. Nevertheless, as a child of the Foreign Service, the book was a gold mine of stories, many of which came from places I had lived or visited. And it reengaged me with the genius that was Twain introducing me to such great pieces as “Life on the Mississippi,” “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,” and the scathing “Pen Warmed Up in Hell.”

Florida, Missouri is a little over 100-miles from St. Charles with only the first 20-miles on the Interstate. Non-interstate travel became the norm for the bulk of our journey westward. You really see more of the regional contrasts in the country on the backroads and small towns. The town of Florida was most unremarkable and the museum where Twain’s birthplace had been replaced reminded me of so many late 1960’s civic buildings, tan brick and bland. Upon entering, we realized the air conditioning was turned low enough to mask the vague odor of spilled milk. Nevertheless, the house is well preserved, and it is remarkable to think that Twain was born there – the seventh of eight children. We have toured his house in Hartford, Connecticut a Victorian, well-appointed manse. That is not at all what he came from! No Passport stamps at this location as it is a State Monument, not a National one. But we did score a couple of magnets with Twain quotes and a Christmas ornament which should blend in well with the national ones. From there we headed to Emporia, Kansas where we would spend the night.

Emporia is about four and a half hours from Florida. It is a very neat town, laid out in the grid pattern that seems to govern all urban planning west of the Mississippi. Courtesy of the “Bring Fido” app, which I highly recommend if you travel with a dog, we found a brewpub in downtown Emporia and dined on an excellent pizza washed down with the local ale. When planning these trips, the other app/book I refer to is “Atlas Obscura.” I’ve been a big fan of AO for a few years – they identify the quirky, off the beaten path types of sites to visit.

As I was planning this trip, I dialed in the national parks we wanted to hit but when you realize that the second one on the list, the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado is 953-miles from St. Louis, you must figure out how to break up the trip. I asked Atlas Obscura about Kansas and out popped the Tallgrass Prairie National Monument about halfway between the two points. That happens to be 20-minutes from Emporia.

We got rolling early the next morning and ended up spending several hours at the Tallgrass Prairie. It is one of several areas on the plains that still has native grasses. Oklahoma has the largest one, but this place is haunting. I think Andrew Wyeth must have visited this place, because it really reminded me of that haunting painting, “Christina’s World.” We hiked for about an hour around the trails in the monument mercifully there was a decent amount of cloud cover and even a slight rain at one point, because the heat was palpable. The miles of treeless vistas and the wind gives the place an almost unearthly feel.

We had cut the travel time to Great Sand Dune by about a third. We put six more hours on the road west to Lamar, Colorado where we stopped for the night. Lamar is a town that time has passed by…it sports more of a run over feel than run down, but it was home for the night. I popped “restaurants” into the “Bring Fido” app and the only thing that looked appealing was a KFC around the block attached to a gas station. Hadn’t done that in a while, but it wasn’t bad. This was not a culinary excursion after all! We recounted the adventures of the past three days over a few glasses of “Writer’s Tears,” my new favorite Irish whiskey and went to bed.