Reporting from Warrenton, MO
LAT 38.49 N LON 91.8 W
Overall, today started well, but went downhill. I would call Missouri the "Show Me (the way out of this) State”.
We started off at the Johnson County Museum—incredibly impressive. There must be some money in this area to fund something like this. It includes an entire “all electric home” from the 50’s.
I’m pretty sure we had this color of counter-top when I was a little kid.
The painting slides back to display a TV. WANT!
There’s also a full-size neon sign from a local hotel.
We moved on to the National Museum of Miniatures and Toys. Two ladies had collections, and ran out of room in their respective homes. I was impressed!
Tiny rooms with even tinier furniture.
Regular and mini.
Of course, I was more interested in the toy collection.
ViewMasters—the Instagram of the analog era.
Stuff I had as a kid is in a museum? Yep, I’m old.
Sure, you got burns from them—but it was fun.
HOT WHEELS!
Moving on to the Truman Presidential Library. President Truman was a pivotal figure from the end of WW2 to the Korean War, along with the Berlin Airlift.
We grabbed a burger and tots just down the street from the Library.
As we continued the drive across the state, we ran into the “Cradle of Ragtime” at a train station
We then hurried to Jefferson City, in order to see the Missouri Capitol before they closed for the day. It was a bit of a letdown. Very impressive from the outside, but the interiors were in bad shape. Part of the place has been turned into a “state museum” that frankly wasn’t as good as the one we saw this morning. Both houses were closed and inaccessible. All the inside arches reminded me of a subway station. At least Mindy got a pencil from the Governor’s office.
At that point, we started to look for a place for the night. Mindy uses her phone to find a place each night, and we generally do pretty well. In this case, for whatever reason, we learned that hotels in Missouri are VERY overpriced. Like nearly double other states. There’s certainly very little drawing people here—just seems like profiteering. Anyway, after some driving and backtracking, we found a place that is decent and slightly better priced. We picked up some local pizza and sacked out.
Thin crust—almost cracker-like. We liked it.
Ehough for tonight. Tomorrow, St. Louis and parts east.