Oklahoma to Missouri |

We left the lovely Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees on Monday, October 3rd and headed over the border to Missouri, our 13th state since we started driving the RV in January. In Cedar Oaks RV Park we had a view of this pretty lake and watched Canadian and Snow Geese enjoy their time on the lake. As we pulled out, a large flock of seagulls swarmed overhead to wish us well on our journey. Now we are in Camp Mi Casa. It’s a very nice park but no view of water.

Our campsite neighbors, Surita and Gene from Texas, suggested some fun things to do in Carthage, Joplin and Branson. One of the best parts of this kind of traveling is meeting friendly, helpful fellow-travelers who enthusiastically share their experiences. These conversations from more seasoned RVers give us insights and information that makes our driving safer and our stops more enjoyable. Sometimes our current life seems a bit isolated. And, although Doug and I provide enough interactions to fill our days, it is nice to converse with others once in a while.

We don’t often mention the weather conditions, but now that we are in the early Fall we are starting to look forward to a season that really didn’t happen in Tucson. In the hot dry desert, the summer heat continues into October and there isn’t much in the way of flora that changes colors. In fact, the only thing that really changed was our ocotillo – its tiny leaves would turn a brownish-orange and then drop off. Otherwise, the cacti don’t change and the mesquite, palo verde and ironwood trees eventually drop their green leaves in the winter, almost immediately before the new spring growth starts to appear in late February.

Doug and I both grew up on the East Coast where the crisp Fall air and pretty leaf colors were a welcome change from the hot humid summer. Although we have spent the past spring and summer in more northern states, we have experienced a heat wave. It was very hot all through the spring which was spent in Northern California and along the Pacific Coast. Then the summer months were unusually warm in Montana and Wyoming. The only exception was one cold, rainy day in Glacier National Park. As we moved south and east through South Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado we stayed in our shorts and carried water bottles everywhere. Texas and Oklahoma also had higher than normal temperatures. It is only the last few days that the air at night takes on a little bit of a chill. So now that it is October and we are in Missouri we can see that the trees are just starting to change. This will be the first real Fall for us in about 20 years.

While in Grove, OK, we visited the Har-Ber Village “museum” described as “a pioneer-era village and history museum located on the shores of Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees in Oklahoma.” The museum consisted of a outdoor walk through the spacious grounds with over 100 different places to visit. Log cabins, doll collections, blacksmith shop, a church, fashion exhibits, glassware and dishes, soap making, a jail, doctor and dentist offices, a courthouse just to name a few. They were all done mostly in the period of late 1800’s. It took a few hours to wander through everything and it was well worth the time!

Har-ber Village

Har-ber Village Doll Collection

Honey Baby doll at Har-ber Village

We looked at all the literature we were given at the Missouri Welcome Center and figured out how to fit it all in the two days we plan to stay here. As is our tradition on the first night in new state, we added Missouri to our state map. It is filling up fast!

Our state map

You can also go here to view our online state map:

States visited

We decided to visit the George Washington Carver National Monument on October 4th. We watched a video on Carver’s life and then went through an extensive museum archiving his life. He was a gentle and brilliant man with much humility and decency. Walking through the woods where he played and learned as a small boy was serene. It was beautiful to spend the day getting to know this inspirational man.

George Washington Carver as a boy

George Washington Carver

The next day we drove into Downtown Joplin. The plan was to use the Visitor’s Map to walk around seeing the murals and public art. The first one we saw was the best one. It was the word Joplin on small photos of locals holding a blackboard with words defining themselves. It was so well done, it made me eager to see more. Well, the map was all screwed up and we walked a lot but only saw a few murals. One was in City Hall – the Heartstrings Mural – the city employees placed strings from Joplin to their hometowns resulting in a very different kind of mural. I was pretty excited to see the Route 66 Park murals. But the “park” was a bit disappointing. Two murals and one large vinyl record on the ground that said: Get your kicks on Rt. 66. It was a lot of walking for just a few murals. But we don’t give up easily. We drove a few miles to the other side of Joplin in search of what looked on the map to be a giant collaged ampersand. It turned out to be about 3 feet tall and we didn’t even feel the need to drive up close to it to take a photo. So our day in Joplin was not all that exciting.