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| where I went this month |
Missouri's land
The land is one of the things that surprised me most about Missouri. I'm not sure now what I expected, but it's not what I saw. I hadn't realized the Ozarks extended so far north into Missouri, so I was surprised at the genuine mountains I ran into. It looked like the neighboring states - western Kentucky and northeastern Arkansas. But once I realized they were there, I was surprised that they weren't an actual mountain range. More like pockets of hills/mountains here and there.
I was also surprised that much of western Missouri looks a great deal like the neighboring states' - Kansas and Oklahoma - farmland "where the wind comes sweeping down the plain."
But the majority of the land in Missouri was rural farming country, with hills everywhere.
Missouri also surprised me by being almost entirely rural. It's got 2 large cities - St. Louis and Kansas City - and several medium-sized ones - Springfield & Columbia - and some smaller ones - Joplin and Jefferson City. But more than 2/3 of the population live in rural areas: Missouri ranks #21 among the states for size, but only #30 for population density.
It's a beautiful state, with mountains and caves, major rivers and forests, farmland and recreational areas. It has geological oddities like the Elephant Rocks, and it sits on a major geologic fault line - the New Madrid Fault, that tracks along the Mississippi River, which is Missouri's eastern border.
Missouri's people
Like other states in this part of the country, Missourians weren't as friendly as I'd expected them to be. You could say Missouri sits between 2 areas - the Midwest and the South. I expected it to be a Southern state, and to have folks be as friendly as most Southerners are. Instead, I found it to be a Midwestern state, where folks were friendly once they got started, but I had to work at getting them started. Most people just didn't want to talk to me - even to say hi, let alone comment on the weather.
When I could get them to talk, everyone told me they liked where they were living, usually either because they liked their neighbors or because they liked how quiet and/or beautiful the area was. I found one guy who told me he liked where he was living because they had 4 seasons of weather. There was that one odd comment I got from the guy who'd moved to St. Louis (where he found folks to be smug) from Kansas City (where they weren't), but he still said he was glad he'd moved. I didn't find anybody who said they'd rather be living somewhere else.
I found 2 dark sides to Missouri, though. One was the number of social problems they seemed to have, based on the state's billboards advertising help for drug use by kids, drug addiction treatment, suicide prevention. But I was really impressed that the state was stepping up to help.
The other dark side was the continuing strong attachment I saw to the Confederacy, which presumably extends to racial inequities. It was in Ferguson, MO, in 2014 that unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a cop. Remember that? And that certainly wasn't the only such incident in this state.
I saw several Confederate flags and what seemed to me a general celebration of Civil War history but, to be fair, only Virginia and Tennessee had more battles on their soil than Missouri did. It's likely that no state was more schizophrenic over the war than MO: it was a slave state that sent 110,000 to fight for the Union and 40,000 for the CSA; it had a star on both those flags; it had dual state governments throughout the war. And as far as I can tell, Missourians have still not come to grips with this duality. Instead, the impression I got is that they think (as many congressional representatives do now about the attempted insurrection) that they can just put it all behind them by wishing it so.
An interesting people in an interesting land.
Driving in Missouri
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| Missouri's current license plate |
They use a different color sticker for each year, so it's easy for cops to see whose registration is out of date.
As far as I know, Missouri is the only state to have a sticker - or anything else this shape - in the middle of their plates, making these easy to pick out from other plates at a distance.
Missouri drivers have apparently never had someone pull over from the lane of travel to let them pass. I say that because most Missourians refused to pass me unless I came almost to a complete stop on the side of the road - even when there was plenty of visibility and passing was legal.
And in the full month I drove in this state, not one driver signaled thanks to me for pulling over. Not even the truckers, who I assume drive all over and know what a thank-you looks like. Very odd.
Many of the roads were fairly lousy, though I've still found none worse than Ohio's. But lots of Missouri's could seriously use some resurfacing (not to mention the county roads I found that weren't surfaced at all). But I was impressed with the state's warning signs, and they were fairly good at telling me where I was most of the time.
What I didn't see that I wanted to see
Although the state's vastly more open now than it was a year ago, there are still many places closed, so I missed a lot. Plus, I made a real effort to get to most parts of the state, which meant I had almost no time left over to visit the major cities. I barely saw anything in Kansas City at all, and though I took a quick driving tour of St. Louis, I didn't actually go into anything
As a result of these factors, I missed a lot I wanted to see. Aside from the things I mentioned in my daily posts, here are some of the other places a longer trip to Missouri could have yielded:
* American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, both in Kansas City. The Federal Reserve Bank in KC offers tours of its Money Museum.
* Also in KC is the Nelson Art Gallery, known for its outstanding collection of Asian art. It also has the largest collection open to the public of Thomas Hart Benton works, and the largest collection in the US of Henry Moore bronzes. From its webpage, it looks like it'd take a week to see everything the museum has to offer.
* The northwestern town of Gallatin has what's called a "squirrel cage jail," one of only 3 rotating jails in the US.
* Near St. Louis is Grant's Farm, home of the Busch Clydesdales.
* Also in St. Louis, the Cathedral of St. Louis (I took a photo of the exterior) has the world's largest mosaic collection.
* Other museums in St. Louis include: the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog; the Museum of Black Inventors; the National Video Game and Coin-Op Museum; the state history museum (currently open only at 25% capacity using timed admission tickets).
* Missouri has a number of caves that have tours, one of the best of which is the Meramec Caverns, operated by the state and currently closed for the virus.
* The Missouri town of St. Mary has a bridge across the Mississippi River to the Illinois town of Kaskaskia - a town that's inaccessible from Illinois. It can be reached only via this bridge from Missouri which, at times, is flooded, limiting access only by boat.
* The official state history museum is inside the capitol in Jefferson City. Guided tours of the capitol itself allow visitors to go places the ordinary public isn't allowed, including the House Lounge where an enormous mural by Thomas Hart Benton (MO native) shows MO's history.
I could have easily spent 3 months here with all the things Missouri has to offer that I'd like to see. Aside from sheer lack of time, one of my biggest problems was finding campsites near the big cities. I hadn't anticipated how difficult it'd be to find nearby places to stay so wasn't prepared. Now that I know, I know I'd need a lot of lead time to locate and reserve places to stay. The smaller towns were much less problematic.
My conclusion
I liked Missouri in general. It's a beautiful state with a lot to offer just about anyone.
The state parks system is a good one, though not really geared for those of us who are technology-challenged.
My only real problem was that the people were on the clannish side and just didn't want to talk to me. Not sure why - I tried to be friendly, I was wearing a mask, I was asking what they liked about where they lived. But most folks didn't much want to strike up a conversation.
So I guess the summary is that Missouri may have 4 seasons, and it may have 2 political parties (though I'm not sure about that), and it certainly has a lot of natural beauty and interesting places, but anyone who thinks of moving here should probably plan on it taking a long time for the neighbors to warm up. Definitely not a Southern state, regardless of the apparent affection for the Confederacy I saw around.
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