Good morning Arkansas!

First stop, Buffalo National River:

I went for a quick run from the visitor center down to the river:

On the way out of the park, I went for a run/hike in the Collier Homestead, one of the last claims from the Homestead Act, made in 1931:

I drove back into Missouri to visit George Washington Carver National Monument:

The site preserves the childhood home of George Washington Carver, agricultural scientist who lectured at Tuskegee Institute, which I visited on our Winter 2019 trip.  Carver was an infant slave when he and his mother were kidnapped by slave raiders.  A bounty hunter was hired to recover them, but he only brought back an infant.  The child raised as George Washington Carver could very well be a different person than the infant slave kidnapped from the Carver homestead.

I toured the visitor center:

A replica of Carver’s lab at Tuskegee Institute:

I ran the park’s nature trail:

A replica of the home in which the Carvers raised their slave George:

Graves of George’s owners:

I continued into Kansas to overnight at Cowley State Fishing Lake.  See the trip map for today’s drive.

Shabbos in St. Louis was very nice.  This morning, I took the light rail into downtown:

Gateway Arch National Park commemorates the Louisiana Purchase and the opening of the American West:

The site also contains the courthouse where the Dred Scott case was heard:

The arch:

There’s an extensive visitor center under the arch:

The exit from the visitor center comes up to ground level at the base of the arch:

On the train back to the RV:

The next stop of the day was Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park, which was founded less than a year ago:

The park preserves 18th-century French colonial buildings constructed using vertical logs, with earth or other materials filling the gaps:

The “double attic” construction was used to keep the buildings cool in the summer and warm in the winter:

Checking out the buildings, which are over 200 years old:

This building has had the exterior siding removed, revealing the vertical logs (white) and earth fill between them (brown):

I continued on to overnight at the Walmart on Thayer, Missouri:

See the trip map for today’s drive.

Good morning from the Walmart of Princeton, Indiana:

This morning I visited George Rogers Clark National Historical Park:

The interior of the George Rogers Clark memorial:

The walls are covered with painted silks detailing the exploits of Clark, including repelling the British from the Upper Midwest in the Revolutionary War and defending St. Louis from a British attack:

I drove past the Indiana Military Museum:

I continued on to St. Louis where I’ll be parked for Shabbos:

Good Shabbos from St. Louis, Missouri!  See the trip map for today’s drive.

The first stop of the day was Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, a 2000-year-old Native American burial site:

Next I visited Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument.  Charles Young purchased this home during his time teaching at nearby Wilberforce University:

Crossed into a couple of states:

The last stop of the day was Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial:

The memorial portion of the site:

The site contains stones that were significant in Lincoln’s life:

The stones are arrayed along this nature trail:

The memorial also contains bronze castings of the sill logs and hearth stones of Lincoln’s boyhood home in their original location:

Lincoln’s mother’s grave:

I overnighted at the Walmart of Princeton, Indiana.  See the trip map for today’s drive.