Well where do we start?

“What about at the beginning, you nitwit”

“Oh, ok”

Just before we left Nebraska, we stopped on an RV park called ‘Cape Camping’, next to the State Capital of Lincoln, where we intended to stop for a couple of nights to explore, but the traffic noise from the nearby freeway was so bad that night, that we ‘upped sticks’ first thing in the morning and moved on.

Travelling on, into Missouri, we crossed the Missouri River a few times, as both we and it, wound our way South, even passing through Daniel Boone country, which was news to us, as we did not realise that this was the area where he originally came from.

Earlier, whilst planning our journey South East, back to Florida, we came upon reference to a little town of Arrow Rock, in the middle of Missouri, that sounded interesting, so that is where we made our next stop for a few days.

So eventually, after an interesting drive through the Missouri countryside, we pulled into the Arrow Rock State Park, a neat park, right at the side of the town.

Why did we aim for here?

Well, during our research of where to stay, we found that Arrow Rock, which was right along our proposed route, was one of the places where the Lewis & Clark expedition crossed the Missouri River, back on the 9^th June 1804 and where the Santa Fe Trail crossing was established by a William Becknell, on the first West Bound trip along the trail, on the 1^st September 1821.

The first Wagon Train, using the Santa Fe Trail actually rendezvoused here at Arrow Rock on the 22^nd May 1822.

We told you this little town was a Hidden Gem.

Nowadays, the whole township is a designated State Historic Site, with many of the original houses and building still standing!!

One that caught our eye (well it would!), was The Huston Tavern, which has been serving fare and lodgings to travellers, since 1834 and is still doing so today – yes, we dined (and drank) there and it was great. 

We probably ought to use the correct definition/description here, because Arrow Rock is in fact called a ‘City’, despite only have 56 citizens at the last count!

Whist there, we looked around to see if we could find another ‘Boot Hill’ and in fact, just outside the town, we found one called Shiloh Cemetery, which did indeed hold a number of graves, dating back to the 1800’s and even a few dating back to people who were born the 1700’s.

But one that caught our eye, was a grave to a little girl, who was born on the 17^th March 1893 and passed away on the 18^th March 1893 – just one day old – RIP

Whilst exploring the area, we came across these (see below), painted on a number of buildings in the little town of Marshalls, just a few miles from Arrow Rock

We thought that they looked pretty ‘neat’.

Then Surprise – Surprise, as we carried on with our trip South, we came upon our Home Town of Chesterfield.

Just kidding, this was a ‘copy town’, our home town is 5000 miles to the East of this one!

Although we shouldn’t be, we were a little surprised at how many time the names of our (UK) towns and cities we saw as we travelled.

York, Lincoln, Manchester, Sheffield, Chesterfield, to name just a few of them!

Journeying on, we passed into Tennessee and crossed the Mississippi River, really wide and imposing, even this far north from the Gulf of Mexico

What do you think of this little Rabbit we saw the other day, doesn’t it look cute!

Somebody once said that pigs couldn’t fly, but that’s not true as you can see from this picture below!!!

That’s all for now, but don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a while, as we have decided to go to Rome for a few days for a change.

Talk soon.