This post covers our fourth, and final week in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Wednesday
The weather continued to cooperate, for the most part. When we left the house, it was in the mid forties and we dressed for weather in the mid forties. So we were very comfortable. We decided to check out the mural exhibit in the downtown area. There were several murals painted on the sides of some of the downtown buildings. When we got out of our car at the first set of murals, the temperature had dropped to the low 40’s, which was still fine. That was until the wind kicked up and dropped the real feel to the low 30’s. It turns out being dressed for the mid 40’s is down right cold in the low 30’s. So we got out of the car, took some pictures of the murals, and jumped back into the car. Here are the murals from our first stop.
There were also some sculptures near the murals, so I got some pictures of those as well. These were from our first stop.
This sculpture was interactive as a musical instrument.
This was at our second stop, but we were not sure if it was part of the exhibit, or just a fancy paint job.
This was the mural at our second stop.
And the sculpture there.
And this statute was there as well.
The final mural was near the Pony Express Museum and showed the progress form the Pony Express to the Stagecoach, to the train.
We returned to our place and I started dinner. I discovered the chicken I was going to cook needed to be defrosted. I was under the mistaken belief I baked the chicken from frozen. So as I tried to figure out how to do a quick defrost, Heather got ahold of Cindy to see if we wanted to meet them for dinner. Problem solved. We all went out to San Jose Steak House and Mexican Food restaurant. As usual, the food was great.
Thursday
The temperature was not an issue today, because Cindy woke up with a headache that turned into a stomach bug. She was unable to keep anything down all day. I ran out to get some sprite and crackers for Cindy, and there was a really nasty accident at the corner where the store was. The front of car was smashed all the way back to the passenger compartment. I don’t know how, or if, the driver survived.
Later in the evening, Cindy became so dehydrated, we ended up in the ER where she received a whole bag of saline. All the Covid and other serious illness tests were negative, so Cindy was given a prescription for me to pick up and we returned to our place. I went to the only pharmacy that was open 24 hours, the one I was specifically sent to by the nurse, only to learn they had sent the prescription to the wrong pharmacy, the one that was already closed. Grrrr. That meant picking up the prescription the next morning.
Friday
Cindy was feeling much better, but was going to stay in and rest up. I spent the morning running errands and picking up the errant prescription from the night before. One of my errands was the post office. While I was there, all of the employees were talking about the car accident I had seen. None of them had seen it, only heard about it on the radio and from other customers. I learned the driver had died, which didn’t surprise me based on what I saw. I showed the postal clerk the picture of the accident on my phone and she took my phone and showed all of the other employees the picture. It made me laugh because she didn’t even ask, yet it seemed natural and normal for a stranger to take your phone to show other people a picture on it. That is something I really like about the area. Later on, the blue jays were squawking away and getting the peanuts Cindy left on the sidewalk for them. I was able to get a few pictures.
Saturday
Another day of great weather, so we headed over to the Amish town, Jamesport. The Amish still get around using a horse and buggy.
We had some really good food at a local restaurant, did some shopping, and headed back home. Jamesport is a must visit when in northwestern Missouri.
For dinner, we had a cheese, charcuterie, and shrimp dinner. I bought something I had never seen before. Triscuit Minis. A regular Triscuit is a cracker about two inches by two inches. These mini Triscuits were tiny. They looked more like Chex cereal than a cracker. They still tasted just like a Triscuit, only with much less cracker to eat. They would make a decent snack item, but were a little too small when trying to put some cheese or meat on them.
Sunday
Back on Presidents Day, Scott’s dad, Denby, had knee surgery. He had been at home recovering, and driving his wife Nancy crazy since then. With Sylvia scheduled to fly in, and the airport being within 15 minutes of Scott’s parent’s house, it only made sense to visit Scott’s parents before picking up Sylvia.
Plus, there is a side story. Back in October when we were in St. Joseph, we had dinner at Denby and Nancy’s house. We wanted to take them some wine and learned Nancy really likes Stella Rosa Tropical Mango. How hard could that be to find? Impossible. We could find every variety of Stella Rosa except for Tropical Mango. We ended up getting her something else and it seemed to work out. However, we were bent on getting her some of her favorite wine. Once we got home, we had no trouble finding the wine. We bought four bottles, I packed them up all nice and safe, and we headed off to the UPS store. Did you know the only people who can legally ship alcohol are companies who are licensed to sell alcohol to parties in states that permit shipments? I didn’t and guess what? I am not a company licensed to sell alcohol. Turns out we should have ordered the wine on line and had it shipped to her. Live and learn. So now what. We held onto the wine and then brought it out with us. That was some well travelled wine and we were finally able to give it to Nancy.
Before going to Denby and Nancy’s house, we followed Scott and Heather to the town of Liberty. As crazy as this sounds, there are no full service car washes in St. Joseph, a town of about 76,000 people. The closest one is in Liberty, a town of about 32,000 people, and about an hour drive away. So drive we did. Liberty is a pretty small town, but it had every type of store and restaurant you can imagine. Oh yea, and a full service car wash. When we arrived, it seemed like all 32,000 residents were not only driving around the tiny downtown area, but were also in line for the car wash. Without exaggeration, the line was at least 200 yards long, if not more. This was the most crowded small town I have ever seen, and hope to never see again.
We took our dirty cars to Denby and Nancy’s house and caught up with them over a pizza lunch. Denby’s knee was healing and he seemed to be doing well. After lunch, we walked around the small lake behind their house.
After our visit, we were off to the airport where we picked up Sylvia. For the record, Kansas City International Airport (MCI) is a super easy to use airport. It is one of my personal favorites. It ranks up there with Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), another really easy to use airport.
We left the airport and headed straight over to one of our favorite BBQ restaurants, Q39 near the downtown Kansas City area. As we walked up to the front door, the smell was heavenly. Unfortunately, the wait to get a table was just over an hour. I was able to find a place very close to us named, “JJ’s Restaurant and Bar.”
It was a little fancier than we expected, but we were hungry and not too underdressed. The food was amazing. I had a wild boar ragu with fettuccini that was out of this world. Cindy had chicken marsala, and Sylvia had the salmon. They loved their meals as well. Here are what Cindy and my meals looked like.
As we left the restaurant, there was a neat full moon.
Monday
This was Sylvia’s first day in St. Joe, so we started off slow. Prior to Sylvia’s arrival, we had been looking at a lot of houses on Zillow, and found one we really wanted to see near the downtown area. It was a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom, 2,000 square foot two story house built in 1911. It had a screened in porch and was listed for $325,000. We had walked around the outside and it looked super clean. We both really liked it and wanted to do a tour. Here is the front of the house.
We were able to get a tour on Monday and scheduled it for after lunch. We had lunch at the Pronto Cafe (not my choice) and went off to have our tour. The first floor was amazing with many classic antique touches that we really liked.
Next was the unfinished basement that was not as creepy as we expected it to be. Off to the second floor where it started to get weird. The bedrooms needed some work and the master bath was actually a converted bedroom with a tub, no shower, and a funky closet. Up on the unfinished and cramped attic, there were several glaring issues that screamed huge money investment. Then we remembered the foundation in the basement was brick, which could become a huge expensive problem at any time. Bottom line was we loved the house, but we love our money more and were not going to invest in a potential money pit.
We spent the rest of the day showing Sylvia around the area before turning in for the night.
Tuesday
This was our last day in St. Joseph and we really wanted to have an exciting day. That was not going to be a problem. At 9:30 am, as the girls were getting ready for the exciting day ahead, we all heard what sounded like some sort of warning siren outside. I went outside and confirmed there was what sounded like a tornado warning siren going off. Yet this is what the weather looked like.
I’m no meteorologist, not do I play one of TV, but I’ve watched a lot of tornado shows on cable and have yet to see one where a tornado struck during clear beautiful weather. I searched the internet and found that the city tested its tornado sirens at 9:30 am on the first MONDAY of every month. This was Tuesday. Could they have been a day late? That was my guess. Then all three of our phones went of and displayed this.
This was not a welcome message. Cindy had just gotten out of the shower and was running around in a towel yelling at Sylvia to get her shoes on. I had to point out clothes were pretty important too. I went outside and could hear a distant siren, so maybe the tornado threat was a little further away? During clear blue skies? Once everyone had their clothes and shoes on, we believed the whole incident was some sort of tornado warning system test. It sure would have been nice to have the word “Test” somewhere in all of that.
Exciting day officially begun. Our first stop was to look at another house we had some interest in. It was a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1,100 square foot attached home (they call it a townhouse) for $135,000. This interested us as an investment property we could also use ourselves. There were people living in the house, but Cindy really wanted to look in the front window. So she did.
I told her if the police came, I was throwing her purse out and driving away. Luckily, no police and she got to go with us to Weston, our next destination. We drove to Weston so we could do some wine tasting and eat at the Tin Kitchen Café. Unfortunately, many of the Weston businesses were closed on Tuesdays, including the Tin Kitchen. We found an open restaurant in the Weston Brewery complex named, “America Bowman Restaurant.”
The food ranged from average to pretty good. The highlight of the stop was finding the former largest ball of string on the property.
We returned to Weston to do some shopping.
As we headed toward our place, we decided to stop and check out the “Green Dot Farm and Creamery.” You can wine taste and get amazing cheese and charcuterie trays. We ordered a tray with just cheese samples and it was amazing.
I did a wine flight tasting and the girls each had a glass of wine. The wines were, but nothing caught my tastebuds enough to buy a bottle.
We returned to our place, freshened up, and headed off to the Culver house for our farewell dinner. We had a great dinner of pulled pork sandwiches, and enjoyed our evening. We returned to our place, packed up as much as we could and got some sleep.
The next post will cover our drive home with short stays in Fort Worth and San Antonio Texas, and Sierra Vista Arizona, near Tombstone.