In the morning, the man who was in his car next to us was still sitting in his car, but with his mouth wide open, fast asleep. But by the time we were ready to drive off, he had already woken up and driven off to wherever he was going that day. We've both fallen asleep sitting up, but it's definitely not the most comfortable position to be in for 7 or so hours!
The Pony Express National Museum
We are well and truly in the throes of summer, as we were already sweating profusely by the time we arrived at our first stop, the Pony Express National Museum, in St. Joseph, Missouri. The Pony Express was a mail service that employed horse-mounted riders to deliver mail from St. Joseph in Missouri to Sacramento in California. It was developed to be faster than mail using stagecoaches, with riders traveling 3,212 kilometers (1,996 miles) in 10 days. It was surprising to learn that it only lasted 18 months (April 1860 to October 1861), because it's been an enduring symbol of the American West, and something we even knew about, not having studied American history extensively.
It costs $10 per adult to get into the museum, and it's super extensive, and very well done! We've visited quite a few museums recently, and we've consistently been impressed with the attention and detail put into the information shared, the artifacts presented, and the interactivity involved. At the Pony Express Museum, we saw detailed maps of where the riders traveled, the horse riding equipment they used (including the mailing pouches), what they typically ate, the relay stations and home stations where riders took a break, and learned about some of the tough weather conditions they endured (including snowstorms, tornados, and blazing heat). There even was an actual well so kids (well, adults too, we tried it) could have a go at pulling up water, as well as biographies, photos, and artifacts from some of the riders. We thought it was a great museum celebrating a piece of American West history.
Glore Psychiatric Museum (and 4 Other Museums)
With such a rich history as a frontier town and a gateway to the West, St. Joseph has a lot of museums, including the Jesse James Home Museum, where the infamous outlaw lived and was gunned down. We were happy to visit another museum (which was really 4 museums in one), as we were intrigued by the sound of the Glore Psychiatric Museum, one of the most unusual museums in the country. The Museum was originally in a ward of an actual State Lunatic Asylum, and details over 130 years of mental health treatment, based on collections from George Glore, who worked at the asylum as an occupational therapist.
It's wild, horrifying and scary to see what was used to treat mental patients, which today would be considered torture! There's straitjackets, hydrotherapy contraptions (looks like modern water boarding), actual wooden and metal cages, solitary confinement spaces, and even devices used to conduct lobotomies! The museum is three levels, that includes details of the patients there and what they suffered from.
One memorable exhibit was of a lady who suffered from pica (when someone eats non-food objects), who died when she was 31 years old, and upon doing an autopsy, doctors found 1,446 objects in her stomach, including nuts, bolts, nails and buttons! These are displayed at the museum. There's also some more modern exhibits around mental health, showing music therapy, dance therapy and artwork from patients. On the basement level, there's a morgue that could fit 4 corpses, which was super creepy. All of this to say, it's an incredible museum and good to see how far treatment has come, although there's still a ways to go in destigmatizing those who suffer mental health conditions.
On the opposite side of the Glore Psychiatric Museum is another door opening up to tunnels, that were used to transport people from building to building. The tunnels are not very tall, and smell like a musty/chemically odor mixed in with each other. There's paintings all the way through to the dead end. The buildings across from the museum were once a state prison, but now it has a facility called Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation, which still operates today.
More Museums!
The admission to the Glore Psychiatric Museum ($12 for adults) also includes entrance to three other museums. The Doll Museum, has dolls from all over the world, collector's editions Barbie dolls and Cabbage Patch dolls and others. Some people find dolls to be creepy, so if that's you, take note!
The Black Archives shows the achievements and contributions of St. Joseph's Black American citizens. It also has a lot of information on Black history, including slavery, the civil rights movement, and contributions to education, sports, music and other performing arts. There's also the Archaeology and Native American Galleries, which have various artifacts from Native American peoples, as well as fossils and other findings from cultures all around the world. While the collections are extensive, because all of the collections are interspersed among each other it did feel like a mishmash of all these different items thrown together! There was even an area as well called "The Museum of Us" which had a lot of pop culture items from the 1980s, on top of everything else! Still, it was a great set of museums and worth the ticket price.
Where is Amelia Earhart?
At some point we crossed over from Missouri into Kansas to check out Amelia Earhart Earthwork, a one-acre portrait of the American aviation pioneer and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. In 1937 during an attempt to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe, her plane went missing, and still baffles people to this day on what happened to her.
The portrait is in Atchison, Kansas, where she was born, but Google Maps led us to a cemetery! We turned back to a sign pointing to a road to follow that led us to a park next door, but still couldn't see it. It turns out that the portrait is now overgrown, with grass and weeds covering it, so it doesn't look anything like the images that we saw online. We could just make it out from the viewing deck, but had we not known it was here we wouldn't have realized it was anything in particular.
We almost ran over a tortoise crossing the road as we drove away--the second time this has happened! We'd never have imagined there'd be wild little tortoises in America's heartland, but they must thrive in the little lakes around here!
Into the Military Base for the Buffalo Soldiers
Thirty minutes' drive south of Atchison, we went to see the monument of the Buffalo Soldiers. They were Black American soldiers who served in the US Army after the Civil War, nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native American tribes, and playina a critical role in protecting settlers, building infrastructure, and serving in conflicts including the Philippine-American War and World War I. They often faced harsh conditions and discrimination despite their dedicated service.
We hadn't looked too closely at where the monument was on Google Maps, but it turns out that it's located in Fort Leavenworth, a military base! So we drove up to the checkpoint and had to show our IDs and provide our social security numbers(!) to get a pass to enter for the day. It's a huge, sprawling fort, with shops, restaurants and other facilities for military workers and their families to live in.
The area where the Buffalo Soldiers monument is located has other busts and sculptures of Black Americans who have served in the military, set in a nice park. There were also a ton of Canadian geese hanging in the park, creating a bit of a minefield on the path with their grassy green poop! There's a sign ahead of the park with a goose on it, and we did indeed have to stop for them as the adult geese and their goslings all crossed the road!
The Other Kansas City
At some point we crossed back over to Missouri from Kansas. Kansas and Missouri were kind of confusing because they both have a Kansas City, which was a single settlement before their state borders were drawn up. So there's Kansas City in Missouri that has 510,704 people, Kansas City in Kansas that has 152,933 people, and both make up the larger Kansas City metropolitan area.
Lisette had looked into doing a West African dance class and found one in Kansas City, Missouri, but it turns out that they don't teach classes during summer. In hindsight, that makes sense because it does get so stinking hot! It's not like in San Francisco, when the temperatures run cool the entire year (and it can be downright cold and foggy in summer).
When we were in Flagstaff, we'd met a couple from around Kansas, who had highly recommended that we try Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, adding that it was set in a gas station. We found parking at the Walmart a little further down across the road, and we did see that it is indeed set in a Shamrock petrol station! Inside, there were a ton of tables, and it was already full of people sitting down to enjoy their BBQ meals. There's outside seating as well, but nobody braved the heat to eat there!
We joined the long line of folks already waiting to place their order, and decided to get the Z-Man BBQ sandwich, which has your choice of meat, cheese, and fried onion rings. Lisette was happy to see that they have a mushroom BBQ choice on their menu! The sauce really makes for a delicious BBQ, and we do like the sweetness of the sauce in Kansas. Michael is excited to try the BBQ from different states in the US, as there are differences in the sauce and the ways the protein is cooked--including dry rubs, and vinegar vs tomato vs sweet molasses sauces!
So Close, Yet So Far, to the Pool
That evening, we found a place to park that was next to a public swimming pool. It reminded Lisette of those pools that American kids go to in the movies in the summer. The type of pools for playing in and lounging around, rather than a pool for doing laps; with lifeguards sitting up high in their chairs, blowing their whistles because a kid is running around the pool when they’re not supposed to.
The pool was closing as we arrived, with kids milling out of it. We parked next to the pool, with nice-looking suburban homes on the other side. The neighborhood, Fairway, looks like a really nice and rather posh area, with large homes, pretty gardens, and clean streets. While it was great to be somewhere quiet and suburban for the night, with folks out walking their dogs in the evenings, we also were conscious of trying not to stand out too much (tough for a 30-foot RV) so that folks wouldn’t get annoyed and call Neighborhood Watch or something because we were obstructing their pretty neighborhood! But we had nothing of the sort, and despite the heat (it would have been so nice to jump into the pool to cool off!), we had a peaceful sleep.
Route Map
