I believe this is my first mention of Dan Rothwell's book which makes it a good place to credit it with providing much of the routing and other information for my drive. The book was available at the Daniel Boone House and at the First Capital Interpretive Center in St Charles. People at both placed knew Dan and I was told he sometimes does volunteer work at the interpretive center.

My take on the "No Parking" parking situation in the last picture is "If it ain't got wheels, it aint' parkin'".

The museum building includes a restaurant, ice cream parlor, and jewelry gallery with the museum in the back. It's $2.50 to visit the museum once or $5 for a one year pass. I went for the one time ticket but it only took me a few minutes in the museum to realize what a good deal I had passed up. Who knew it would be this cool. Marlene Crane herself gives overviews of what's there to everyone who enters. That's her in the picture. Joe, her husband, is the third Crane generation to run the store and their son David is now pretty active in that role. He has two young sons so a fifth generation of family operation seems likely.

The store added White Eagle gas in 1927 and essentially stayed the course when Mobil bought White Eagle ten years later. Marlene says that the museum has only about a third of the stuff Joe has tucked away. Maybe they'll expand some day. A visit is a marvelous step back in time and Marlene is a marvelous guide. Out front you can rest on one of the lawn chairs while you're licking your ice cream cone and thinking about the other two-thirds of Joe's stuff.

Near the edge of town, a sign warned of a road closure 7 1/2 miles ahead and pointed to a detour. Pshaw, I thought. Surely there would be plenty of side roads in 7 1/2 miles and the GPS would guide me around the problem when necessary. I drove by the detour sign and enjoyed over seven miles of some of the nicest driving of the whole trip. When the end did come, I couldn't recall seeing any side roads for quite awhile and the GPS was still "Acquiring Satellites". Yeah, it was somewhat cloudy but there was some sun coming through and there wasn't even a roof to block anything. Either the GPS was broken or there was some nasty weather somewhere.

I skipped a couple of gravel roads and held out for the paved route KK something over four miles back. Aside from possibly keeping me from getting lost, that only delayed the inevitable. A pavement ends sign soon appeared. So here I am on a gravel road in Missouri with a non-functioning GPS when inevitable number two hits. Big drops, too. I managed to get the top on before there was standing water in the car and reminded myself that I ought to practice that more. Into every lap a little rain must fall.