R and J in the USA

We had a great time in the Show Me State. We experienced awe and marvel, peaceful revelry, excitement and epic moments, profound reflections in history, entertainment and laughter, culinary delight and a few moments of manageable but genuine heartbreak. Like any other state on this trip, we left wanting more and only just barely managed to fit in a portion of what we wanted to – but everything we did do – we had a great time doing.

One of the downsides of the way we planned our itinerary is that there are a handful of states that we are seeing in the more drab months of January. January in places where the snow is bountiful is just as much a natural marvel as any sun-soaked beach or spring-blooming field or woodland. But, we tried to plan our itinerary in such a way where we wouldn’t need to navigate snowy roads or tackle a frozen water-tank that often. Not that one can’t travel in such temperatures (and Julie did it already in fall/winter of 2023 for a few weeks), but for all we wanted to fit in, we wanted to take that obstacle off of the table. That means that there are a lot of states whose natural beauty is harder to describe in our posts, cause we just didn’t see it in full bloom, or, sometimes, we didn’t see it at all. Missouri is a bit of an exception because we came here on a different trip that Julie took in May of 2023 before we got the van. Julie decided to take 5 weeks to take a memory lane trip where she traveled through all the geographic places of her life, in chronological order. Not only did it end up being a deeply revelatory and profound trip, one of the stops was in a teeny little Ozark town in Southeast Missouri called Hartshorn, where as soon as you notice you entered the town’s main street, you have already left it. Ryan had met up with Julie in Ohio to join her for the Missouri leg of the trip, so we got a chance to see the state in its late spring glory. Julie remembers, on that trip, falling asleep somewhere in Illinois and waking up deep into the rolling green of Missouri with the sun glistening and shining down on the tall grass prairies and deep rich forests. Julie still remembers the feeling of deep peace and calm she felt when she woke up from her nap surrounded in the beauty of Missouri. We saw beauty this time around, but it’s not the kind of beauty that is as easy to write about, or to write about with any hint of romantic appreciation – because it was all fairly drenched in a bit of January drabness. Furthermore, we just saw less of it, finding ourselves mostly in urban areas this time around thanks to our originally planned 7 days in the state having been reduced down to barely 5. 

Still, we had a wonderful time in the Missouri that we did manage to see.

We saw the Grand Country Jubilee in Branson, ran a 5K at Missouri State in Springfield (that you can read about in our 5K section), took in the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library in Independence, reflected at the National World I Museum and Memorial and cheered (and then wept for) our beloved Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championships in Kansas City, took in the State Capitol and state history in Jefferson City, rode in a teeny pod to the top of the Gateway Arch and enjoyed St. Louis style-bbq and the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis and got Julie’s stately swim in at an aquatics center in Cape Girardeau. The time went by so quickly and we had a blast every place we went.

It’s hard to say what creates the feelings one has in a state. It could just be how we happen to be feeling that day as a result of months on the road. It could be the weather. It could be the activities we have planned or what we ate the day before. Or it could be a vibe that comes together from land and people and history all bundled into one. Whatever it is, we found ourselves feeling loose, relaxed and just plain having a good time in Missouri from the get go. We managed to write about some of our experiences in more detail in other posts (you can read more about our time in Branson or how we ended up getting to see the Bills in their AFC Championship game), a feat we don’t always find the time or the words to do. 

After our race and a stop at Big O Tires to finally get our tire replaced after putting the spare on the van back in Texas, we made our way up to Independence, MO just outside of Kansas City by 3PM, leaving us two hours to take in the Harry S Truman Presidential Museum and Library. It wasn’t nearly enough. It was a fantastic museum of an extraordinary President during an extraordinary time in history. Julie was lapping up nearly every word of history and only got through the museum to the end of World War II before we heard the announcement that the museum would close in 5 minutes. Ryan got through the whole of the museum, but did it by skimming many of the exhibits. There was a guest book there to be signed that would make its way to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum and Library in Georgia in honor of his recent passing. We wrote our message to President Carter and were looking forward to seeing the book again when visit his museum in less than a month in Georgia. We swung by Truman’s boyhood and adult home in Independence and took in the lovely town square of the modest and charming small town sitting right outside a huge city.

After spending the night at an RV park in Independence, we headed over to the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. It was a profound experience.  The museum had big metal doors that caught our attention and was built into the ground, purposefully so and for a symbolic reason that we remember learning, but we don’t remember what it was. The upside of going to so many sites and museums is that we are learning so much. The downside is that our brains are small and there seems to be only so much information that we take in that actually stays in. One of the motivations for us to write this blog is for our future selves. But, sometimes we don’t even retain what we learn long enough to get it recorded. But, it’s still nice to remember being edified, if only for a moment. The museum was really well done. Over this trip, we’ve come to be amateur museum connoisseurs, having more and more awareness of what makes a museum well done or not so well done. Some museums manage to take you into an experience in an immersive way where you walk away having felt something and having your perspective on that piece of history or on that piece of the present, or even on yourself, life or humanity at large expanded. The National World War I Museum definitely managed to accomplish all of those things. It started with a powerful walk over a glass floor with 9000 crafted poppies below. Each poppy represented a thousand dead. The poignancy was palpable.

There was an unexpected type of profundity we experienced having to do with the juxtaposition of ending up in the museum the same day as a big championship game. You can read more about that in our post on Team Spirit in Kansas City.

Getting to go see the Bills in an AFC Championship definitely takes the cake as one of the most unexpected fun opportunities we ran into on this trip. There were a lot of Bills fans that had made the trek. Julie ran into one woman in the ladies room that had driven 16 hours to get to the game. She was surely not alone. Though Chiefs fans definitely outnumbered Bills fans by a lot, there were Bills fans in the thousands that had made their way to the game. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were that, through all of our various itinerary tweaks and changes throughout the trip, we happened to land in Kansas City on the same day that the Bills did at this high stakes moment in the season. We wished our “luck” had more impact on the outcome of the game itself, but at least we were there to see it. The best part was getting to be there and share some of the fun and excitement and pictures with friends and family in real time.

Going up into the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was an adventure in itself. To get to the top, visitors crawl through 4 foot tall concrete doorways into a teeny little round pod that glows blue, giving off an aura like you are getting into a spaceship. Inside the little pod are five seats crammed together in the round. The steel doors close behind you and then the various ropes and pulleys start to crank you up the 634 feet to the top of the arch. It takes 4 minutes to get to the top and, when you are there, you can almost feel the empty space that you are hovering above however many feet of steel below you. Leaning over to peer out the windows and take in the view of St. Louis in all directions was pretty neat – especially looking at the historic old court house just below where the impactful Dred Scott decision was, regrettably (to say the least) rendered. We could even see our van from this elevated vantage point. It’s an experience worth having for anyone willing to make the climb. There is plenty of airflow inside the little tram pod, but for those that aren’t too keen on small spaces or heights, it’s probably not the best combination. We loved it. Afterwards, we roamed the history museum inside the arch visitor’s center and took in their 30 minute documentary about the construction of the arch. If you ever get a chance to go there, we highly recommend watching the documentary, and doing so after you go up to the top. It is an absolute marvel of engineering and construction and watching what those gentleman did to put the arch in place will surely cause an audible gasp or jaw-drop at some point. 

We had a great time inside the arch and wandering around it, looking up at it in awe. 

We are definitely noticing a build up of a certain kind of tiredness at this point in the trip. We’ve been tired at various points throughout. Energy management is definitely a constant moving part of maintaining the pace we are moving at. But, we are noticing a different kind of tiredness, like a blunting of our senses or a subtle, but present, slowing down of our minds as we take it all in. It is a little harder to retain the information we take in from museums and a little more work to remember it all and record it all and capture it all in our writing. Julie continues to succeed in writing an ode for every state before leaving or soon thereafter, but she is finding it getting a little bit more challenging to pull each one together. It’s all to be expected as we approach the 8 month mark. While we are both looking forward to being in one place for multiple days in a row and getting a chance to be in place without taking in new experiences and new information – we also don’t want the trip to end. In some ways, its the perfect balance of feelings to approach a bittersweet closing that is now 12 states away. That said, 2 months and 12 states is still a remarkable adventure yet to come and we are so grateful that we have the amazing good fortune to do it. If we stopped our trip after the first 12 states we would have already felt we got to have the adventure of a lifetime. So, we are tired, but in the best of ways. We are tired for being chock full of experience and information. We are tired for pushing ourselves to run 5Ks and write blog posts and songs. We are tired for living our lives the way we want to and having the adventures that we most want to have. 

And, if there is any place to really start feeling that build up, where our dedication to this trip and what it is for us to do it has to overcome the natural resistance of readiness to take a break, where else but the Show Me State should it be. We are here to show that we are all in on this 10 month odyssey and going the distance to do our best to get to know each state in these 50 United States. Along the way, the Show Me state showed us a pretty great time.