North to Mexico! and a covered bridge.

The place names round here continue to amuse me. On the local radio they keep referring to Mexico, to the north, which is slightly disconcerting.
On sunday, a beautiful, very cold, sunny day we set off to see Mark Twain's birthplace and the countryside around. They are very proud of Mark Twain here and he certainly was an interesting and witty man. I read Tom Sawyer for the first time I enjoyed it but thought it rather dated and spread a bit thin. Roland read Huckleberry Finn and thought it had good bits. We have started on some short stories.

Sunday morning is a very good time to go driving. Most people are in church and the roads are empty. We go through Mexico, Santa Fe and stop just before Florida- it gets very confusing. The birthplace is a small, two roomed wooden cottage, removed from it's original position in the nearby village and placed inside a purpose built Mark Twain museum. The museum is large and interesting and we are the only visitors. It is set in the Mark Twain national park, of which there is rather a lot.
Here is the huge lake made from damming the Salt river. It is surrounded by trees. The setting is lovely and empty. We wish we had brought a picnic as it is warm if you stay in the sun.

We managed to find a sandwich place open for lunch in the thriving metropolis of Florida!
We then head west via Paris to look at a covered bridge.















There used to be thirty covered bridges in Missouri. By 1958 there were only eight left. Now, there are just four!

This one is the Union covered bridge and is the only double Burr-arch one. You can see what that means from a photo of the interior.

The interior is very impressive despite the fact it is covered in graffiti. Apparently Burr designed this type of arch, which enabled bridges to be much longer, without losing strength. This has two, just to make sure!

As you can see, the bridge is in need of a bit of love and attention. The timber here was removed by park rangers, to allow the water to go through more easily in a recent flood and stop the whole thing being swept away. Considering how high up this bridge is, the water must have risen dramatically.

Even though it is need of repair, it looked very solid and beautifully made. I've always wanted to see a covered bridge like this and it didn't disappoint. I got a bit carried away taking photos, but the construction was fascinating.

That was a real treat.

We saw this barn on the way home. There are a lot of very beautiful barns. Wooden, often with tin roofs looking very northern european in style. Haven't been able to photo many as there is nowhere to stop.
This was on a very quiet back road and that is a turkey vulture or buzzard as they are called here, sitting on the top.

I tried to get closer, but he flew away. They are everywhere and are massive birds, with a wingspan of up to 109 inches!
Getting back to barns, they are usually this colour or white and there are some very interesting ones. More later, if I can get Roland to stop the car in time!

We had dinner out on saturday at a colleagues house. The rest of the guests were retired from the college, but were an interesting group, apart from when they started to talk about dogs.....
 Everyone has a dog here, and out here, it probably makes sense. It's still a dull thing to talk about.
The most interesting thing about the evening was the house itself. We had walked past it several times and really liked the look of it.

Dark, mysterious with a gazebo round the side. It turns out that this is the house designed and lived in by Bell himself. Fulton's famous architect. It was just as eccentric inside. He liked parrots and the parrot had an inside room, with wooden fretwork cage and the gazebo for summertime. The present owners have stuffed it full of antiques, so there is not a bit of wall or surface uncovered. Wonderful to look at, hell to keep clean. The roof is so complicated, that when it needed re-roofing they couldn't find a roofer who would touch it. They ended up doing it themselves and I gather it was not easy!
The food was good. All homemade and delicious. What a relief. Plenty of good wine too, so a very jolly evening.

Tonight's the night, so I'm off to dress for the occasion!

Pumpkins and other things.

Autumn is celebrated in a big way here, culminating in Halloween. The shops, peoples houses, businesses have all had their decorations up now for over two weeks. They don't just stick one lonely pumpkin in the window, they decorate the entire house, inside and out, with ghosts, ghouls, witches, cobwebs, spiders and pumpkins. You look in peoples windows and see tombstones and the like.

Walmart is awash with orange decorations.

 Pumpkin outside lights, decorative gourds, scarecrows, Halloween clothes and a whole mountain of trick or treat paraphernalia.

As you can see, it's cheap.

 We still have a whole month before Halloween! There is a Halloween parade in town, which we must make sure we see.
Outside of town we can go to a corn maze and pick our own pumpkin from the pumpkin patch, or just buy it cheap from Walmart.

 A pumpkin man has appeared at the farmer's market, who is not unlike the pumpkins he is selling- rotund!

I started talking to him and he was a very nice man. He is a teacher of agriculture at the local school and pumpkins are his hobby. Orange is his favourite colour!

His van was a weird and wonderful selection of pumpkins, some heritage varieties. Some were valued by the indians because they would last all winter. They are the less beautiful ones. Some of them look as if they are covered in warts! Most of them taste better than the one that is commonly used for Halloween decorations. I thought they were beautiful. He gave me one of the little ones as a present.

 Everywhere there are huge pots of chrysanthemums in autumnal shades, which people place round their front gardens. I like it! It seems to be an acknowledgement that the season is on the turn.

On a different note, a new friend was collecting a cake for her daughter's birthday. While we waited I flipped through the designs they offered and was amused to see a cake with a man with a shotgun on one side of the cake and a dead deer on the other! I didn't think that would be a big seller in Islington.

Roland has appeared in the local paper and would have been interviewed on the radio if he was prepared to be in college at 6.30am, which he wasn't. So I thought I would leave you with his cheery face..

And his photo taken specially for his interview on the college website

We have been invited to a party tonight. 6pm!!! They do start early. I will be interested to see what they eat, drink and do at parties.

Autumn chill and the next big event in Fulton!

We started last week with temperatures in the 90's. The bedroom fan on at night and sun hats for walking. By sunday, the temperature had dropped dramatically. Today, we tried the central heating, found my winter clothes and am wearing shoes for the first time for months. The change was literally overnight.

We had a trip out on saturday, which was sunny and hot. We went west along the Missouri to several 'historic' towns. The first- Rocheport, was more a one street village of pretty brick houses, nothing outstanding and nothing open! It's true, there aren't many tourists round here, but they don't exactly encourage it. Rocheport, however is right next to the Missouri and straight on to the Katy Trail. A 200 mile nature trail, bicycle track along what used to be the Kansas/Texas railway line. This is one of the more interesting bits with tunnels cut out of the cliffs and bluffs above the river plain.

You can see Roland is pleased. It's the train thing again!

The old railway bridge over what would be a creek is over a rather large river. This is not the Missouri, it is the flood plain, and there has been a lot of rain.

The whole of the Missouri valley here is under water. It looks very attractive, but I don't suppose it's doing the trees much good.

We climbed to the top of the cliffs and all the water you see is flooding. In the far distance, you can see the actual river. Too many trees to see properly.

We went on to the next historic town, Boonville. Bigger, but also closed.

 I now realise why we have come here when we end up here.

The tourist information centre in the old station is closed, but we run in to a direct descendent of Hannah Cole, the first women to set up home here and founder of the town. She had nine children and no husband, the indians had got him. She must have been tough.

This was interesting. It was the Sheriffs home, with jail attached. In the back garden is the old tin barn where they hung the convicted prisoners. Very compact justice.

This is the shed out back.

Boonville looked a bit more lively. It's a bigger place and it has a number of listed mid 19th century houses. It also is home to an old theatre, which dates from the 1850's and is a very fine building.

Opposite was a church with an unexpected and rather pleasing message.

These old adverts were rather good. The price is 5c. !

As the weather has got cooler, it has been easier to walk further afield. I can actually walk to Walmart- deep joy. I tend to just walk around the streets, looking at the houses. There are several I will try to photograph at some stage, but I want to do it unobserved! They are in the less salubrious parts of town.

The old railway line still goes through Fulton.  

The station still exists, but is now used as a storage shed.

On one of my walks I managed to get this squirrel. I know they are a menace, but I liked this.

Well after the symposium the next big event in Fulton is Roland's lecture! It is being advertised all over town and they have produced postcard sized flyers, with Roland's face beaming out from them. It's open to all comers, so I told him it better be good. It is not supposed to be too erudite, so that we, the riff raff can understand it. Somehow, I don't think it will get the coverage that James Baker did, but it's fame for a day. They also put on a reception afterwards.

Well I'm off for a chilly walk. It's a beautiful day, but icy.

St. Louis and James Baker.

We have had a pretty exciting week. St. Louis and James Baker within 4 days. It's all go in Missouri!

We had another huge storm on saturday night. Thunder and lightening and torrential rain. I thought we would wake up to a lovely clear day, but it was still going strong in the morning. Roland was not very keen on driving in those conditions, but we were meeting my friend Leslye to celebrate her birthday in St. Louis.
We left in torrential rain and it was still bucketing down two hours later.
Lunch was in Leslye's son's home, his so called 'starter' home, which I think to most people would be a pretty good permanent home. It was interesting to go into a fairly typical home of the younger generation. He is a lawyer and has just got married. His main interest is sport and to keep him up to date with what is going on in the sporting world, he has 8 televisions. Not piddly, little televisions, but great, half room monster, flat screen ones. All on, with different games and sports. The large basement, so typical of american houses was also dedicated to sport. Memorabilia, TV's. a bar to keep you lubricated while you watch and lots of big sofas!
We spent rather too long over lunch and then had the lightening tour of St. Louis, starting with the arch.

It is far more impressive in real life and actually rather beautiful.

As you can see, the rain had actually stopped. The arch is right by the Missouri river, which is a very wide, muddy affair. Impressive rather than beautiful. They got rid of a lot of old industrial buildings to create this park and put up the arch and they seem to have almost erased the past, which is a pity.

They still have the Eads bridge, which was the first cantilever bridge in the world. It's the one in front.

Not a good photo, but taken from the top through some rather thick glass.

We were lucky with our timing. There was no queue to go up the arch. Apparently you can wait for 4 hours. Roland didn't want to come. He is not too good with heights. But curiosity got the better of him and he didn't want to miss out, so he came.
The whole thing is very old fashioned. You go up in tiny capsules, that hold 5 small people.

The viewing chamber up the top is also small, and the windows even smaller. You do, however get a pretty good view over St. Louis.

The building in the centre is the old court house and it is rather lost amongst the skyscrapers.

This is the Cardinals stadium. The St. Louis baseball team.

Roland was very pleased to come down and his colour improved considerably. He's glad he did it and won't be doing it again.

Our last port of call was a famous ice cream parlour- or frozen custard as they call it. I had a small tub and could hardly finish it. Rather too much hot fudge sauce! The parlour just happened to be on the old route 66, so that called for a photo.

We weren't dressed appropriately for the photo, but never mind.

We were given a quick drive round the city just to give an impression of the place. It is huge, spread out and very green. It has one of the biggest metropolitan public parks in the world, Forest Park, which covers 1,370 acres right in the centre of town, left over from the 1904 world fair. The art gallery also dates from that time. What we see looks pretty prosperous.There is a lot to see and we intend to come back and do it over several days.
By the time we are driving home, the sky is clear and we get another fantastic sunset. Sorry, I get a bit carried away with them.

As you see, America is big on telegraph poles and cables. None of it is hidden.











This week, the college is hosting it's annual symposium, which this year is on global conflict. The star guest is James Baker, who was secretary of state, secretary of the treasury and other important positions under a number of presidents. He is eighty, but still very on the ball, articulate, informed and runs up stairs!
He speaks to a packed auditorium and there are a lot of media people present. He very pointedly in his examples, only talks about the first gulf war and it is pretty obvious he was against the second but is being tactful. He takes questions from the floor and impresses with his intelligence, knowledge and good sense. This is not someone who would rush into something without looking at all the alternatives and someone who would be aware of the consequences of his actions! unlike some!!!

We meet him again at the president's house for a reception.

 Roland has quite a long talk with him and confirms our impressions. I just get to shake his hand! It was very interesting to be able to hear and meet a man who held considerable power in this country. It's a pity there aren't a few more of his calibre around.

Back to reality today. It has been in the 90's for the last week, but this is supposed to be the last day of summer! Tomorrow it is going to drop to 70 and you would think the big freeze had started. I can't imagine the cold, but we know it's coming. The next month however is supposed to be beautiful, so will try to enjoy it while it lasts.

Couldn't resist taking this photo. It was parked just up the street.