Over the river and through the woods.....

June 12 – We were up and out at 8:30 but by the time we dropped some mail off and hooked up the car it was 9 when we officially pulled out of the RV park.  I took a deep breath and hopped on I-64 and headed through downtown St. Louis.  It wasn’t too bad and we got a great view of Busch Stadium from the car. 

Daniel Boone House

First stop was the last home of Daniel Boone and where he died.  The exit for Defiance, MO wasn’t too far up the interstate but the road was a trip in itself.  Driving a car on this curvy, hilly, narrow 2 lane road would be exciting enough but doing it in the RV, I was holding my breath.  It was a long 7 miles and then a left turn into a pretty narrow gate.  Being the “experienced” driver that I am, I made it safely and left my breath out once the brake was on!

The Daniel Boone house actually belonged to his son Nathan and his wife Olive and their 14 children.  Daniel spent the last 7 years of his life there after Rebecca’s death in 1813.  The house has 2.5

Dining Room in basement

foot thick walls of limestone and is 4 stories tall.  The house is original as is a smaller house that belonged to Daniel’s brother and is behind Nathan’s house.  Several other buildings from the 1800’s have been brought to the property from within the county.  The property is actually called Lindenwood Park and they have created a little village.  You can walk it on your own but to go inside the buildings you must go on a guided tour.  We were only interested in the Boone house so didn’t walk the whole park.  As we left we saw a fawn and later a doe.

Driving back to the highway was as bad as driving out.  I had to share the road with 2 big trucks and the first one slowed down and made sure we could each pass but the next one just whizzed by like he was “king of the road”.  By the time we got to the interstate I had 4 vehicles behind me who were not “happy campers”, but I was, just to get back on a big road again!

The rest of the day was just driving and seeing road kill, road work and traffic on and off.  We stopped for fuel and lunch in one stop and later we had to make a bathroom stop.  My least favorite city driving today was through Kansas City.  The road was like a maze.  We went down and under bridges and around and under bridges and finally surfaced.

We got into Walmart in Topeka, KS around 5:15.  Bill took a prescription in to be filled and while they worked on it we decided to walk over to a Mexican place, Joe Pepper’s Border Grill and Cantina.  Don’t try it!  The best thing was the really thin chips.  We prefer our small family owned place that serves almost real Mexican food.  Bill picked up his script and watched a lot of the baseball draft.  West Orange had a guy go #29 in the first round to the Texas Rangers.

We only put out our closet slide tonight because we are parked downhill back to front.  I didn’t want to stress the full wall slide so we’re kinda cramped tonight.