As Andrew and I did in the spring of 2021 we planned a long road trip back to our winter home in Florida. We started with a visit to our Cedarhills friends – Roger, Henry and Gary before heading for my childhood home in Missouri. Our first stop was a visit with my friend, Hugh David Waggoner, in Jefferson City, MO. My family moved to Jeff City in 1957 where I attended grade school and high school.
As a graduation gift from high school we were sent to Europe for ten weeks in the summer of 1964. David, Charlie and I first visited my foreign exchange student, Burkhart Kramer in Osnabruck, Germany before starting on a ten week odyssey. Burkhart had planned a trip that took us to eight countries including East Berlin in the time of Soviet occupation. As David said, “The trip was the most exciting thing he has done in his life.” We had a wonderful dinner at the Madison Café(formerly known as Adcocks and the Brass Rail) which has been a restaurant on that site for more than seventy years.
Next we went to visit my cousin, Tom Andes, in Columbia, MO. Columbia is the home of the largest of the University of Missouri universities. I graduated with three degrees in 1970. The main reason for our visit was to hear Tom play jazz piano at Murry’s where he has performed for thirty years. It was wonderful spending most of the day with Tom and meeting his new love, Ashley. Tom recently retired from many years teaching at Stephens College and the university.
Our next stop was the Lake of the Ozarks to visit Bagnell Dan which created the lake. We stopped to visit the site of the boy scout camp, Pa He Tsi, which I attended and worked at for many years. Only the site remains because the old WPA camp was torn down many years ago. We went on to visit Jimmy Buffet’s Resort Margaretaville, formerly Tan-Tar-A Resort where I worked for two summers in the 1960’s.
Late afternoon we drove to Rolla, MO where my family lived from 1950 to 1957. My father built the new Phellps County Hospital which has been totally subsumed by new structures of Phellps Health. But the biggest surprise came when we looked for my neighborhood. It has been completely destroyed for construction of new buildings at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Nothing remains of the houses we lived in including the one my parents built new in 1951. Nothing remains of the houses of my friends Sue and Jim. Nothing remains but good memories except the Dairy Queen where we were allowed to walk to when we were seven years old.
The good news is the main street of Rolla hasn’t changed much including the barber shop where I got my haircuts. The following day we traveled to St. James, MO about twelve miles from Rolla to visit my cousin, Jim Morrison. In birth order he is number three cousin while I am the oldest. We walked the St. James Cemetary to visit the grave site of my mother, her parents and many relatives before driving on a spectacular fall day to Merrimac Springs. The springs is the site of the oldest iron foundry west of the Mississippi River. They started making iron there in 1826. The foundry was closed more than one hundred years ago but the site is now a park which is famous for its spring. More than one million gallons of water flow from the spring every day. We enjoyed a picnic with Jim as Andrew fed the millions of trout that are grown there.
We are ready for new adventures with fond memories of the start of our 2021 trip.
On a rainy day we drove south into Arkansas through the rolling Ozark Mountains toward Little Rock. We decided to eat at a restaurant called Brave New Restaurant above the Arkansas River near downtown Little Rock. The meal celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. We met and talked with Chef/Owner Peter Brave who prepared a fabulous meal on a glorious fall evening warm enough to sit outside beside the river.
We are ready for new adventures with fond memories of the start of our 2021 trip. We had no definite plans for a Sunday in Little Rock so decided to go to the Little Rock Zoo. The design of the facility is excellent and the animals looked well fed and cared for. Our adventures the following days included hiking and doing picnics in numerous state parks in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
Our next stop was Hot Springs, AR where we not only bathed in the thermal waters of one of the historic bathhouses we climbed to the top of the tower in the Hot Springs National Park. Our day in Hot Springs led us to Lake Ouachita State Park on a wonderful fall afternoon.
The most exciting stop was in Hugo, OK at the Growler Pines Tiger Reserve owned by our Circus World friend Ryan Easley. Ryan and his eight tigers performed at Circus World for several years before the Covid 19 pandemic struck. All performances of the ShowMe Tigers ended since not only Circus World but also all circus cancelled performances in 2020. That decision led Ryan and Elaine to decide to open their own refuge for their growing tiger family. Ryan is in the midst of construction of a private venue for performance and care of their animals. It is open to the public by reservation.
In northern Louisiana at a D’Arbonne we saw first hand the devastation of a tornado that swept through the park last summer. Many giant trees were toppled. The club house and bathrooms were damaged but repairs are ongoing. We still found an upright picnic table for our lunch. That was followed by a hike through the deserted woods of the park. We ended our week in Jackson, MS. We went to the Saturday Farmer’s Market for some goods to bring with us to Florida. Then we found a lovely park called ______________ for hiking.
Laurel, MS was our next destination. We wanted to come to Laurel because it is home to our favorite HDTV home fixer-upper show called Home Town starring Ben and Erin Napier. Being Sunday most stores and restaurants were closed but we did find the two stores owned by Ben and Erin open as well as a busy Mexican restaurant. In the afternoon we found our hotel and decided to rest for a while before striking out to see if we could recognize any of the houses that had been restored on the show. As we watched a rerun of Home Town we watched the renovation of a house by a couple that were giving the house to two women who had fallen on hard times. Later as we drove around the neighborhoods we found the house near a large park. It was exciting to see the house on television and then see it in real life.
Our last stop in Laurel was the Bird Dog Café. This was a restoration that Ben and Erin did several years ago that has become a favorite of Home Town fans. We drove to Mobile which is a lovely Southern city that remains much like it was at the time of the Civil War. This was as stopover as was Gainesville, FL before returning to our home in Pompano Beach. Our initial plan was to be home three days and then travel to Utah to visit my grandson, Peter at the University of Utah before taking the Rocky Mountaineer from Mohab, UT to Denver. But Andrew’s illness prevented us from going on the final portion of our trip.
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