Kansas- Day 4 to Jefferson City, Missouri and back August 4, 2016

Last night was simply a horrible night. I had an incredible amount of trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep. My CPAP machine was too loud for the second night in a row, and yet, for the second morning in a row, it seemed just fine. I don't know whether or not it's because I left the water tank for it at home. I was getting to the point, where I was starting to feel ill because I was so in need of sleep.

Luckily, it did not cause problems for me during the day, even though getting up before 7:30 meant I had well under 6 hours sleep. My husband was able to eat breakfast with me, which was nice. Perhaps it was due to our later start on breakfast, but the fruit selection was not nearly as good as yesterday. The scrambled eggs were obviously not from real eggs.

We left the hotel at 9:11 and I dropped him at the KU music building at 9:20. My GPS sent me to the closest on ramp to I 70, which happened to take me past a low, factory-looking building marked "Hallmark Cards". How cool! I thought, they were all done in Kansas City.

 At 9:26, I picked up my toll ticket, which then let me finish the eastern end of the turnpike. I did stop at the Leavenworth Service Area at 9:34, which was good, because there wasn't another rest area for quite a while. I took advantage of the McDonald's there to buy 3 chocolate chip cookies to celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. When I got back on the road at 9:43, it was 88 degrees.

At 9:51, with 9903 on the odometer, I paid the $2 toll and continued east. The closer I got to Kansas City, the heavier the traffic became. And I had to drive all the way around the city, so that was no fun. By 10:38, I passing through rolling farmland and forests. There were billboards and civilization most of the way.

At 11 (9982), I stopped at the first rest area I'd found. I had to take a picture of the rules sign that said you couldn't take livestock out of the vehicle. Now I'm wondering if that is at rest areas on all interstates and I just never noticed. When I got back on the road 10 minutes later, it was now 93 degrees.

 The traffic stayed steady and the sky was a bit hazy. It got rural for a while and then there was an ad for Cracker Barrel. At 12:20, I was on US 63, which really rolls. And, then, it flattens out as it approaches the Missouri River. Bridgework slowed the entrance into Jefferson City, but it was nothing like it was when leaving town later.

I was lucky enough to get a parking space on the curved drive in front of the Capitol at 12:43 (10,084). I posted a nice artsy picture that I took across a fountain towards the Capitol on Facebook before going inside.

There was no security to go through inside. The restroom was easy to find and then I went to the info desk only to find out I was just in time for the 1 pm tour.
(I love an old-fashioned looking restroom:)

There were about 11 of us on the tour, most of whom lived in or had lived in Missouri. The gentleman doing the tour had lived in the town for 50 years, but had been doing the tour for 1. He told us lots of tidbits about the building, in particular the art, of which there is a lot. They'd had a special tax to retire the bonds that paid for the building and had $1 million left over. The attorney general said it had to be spent  on the building, so they commissioned a lot of art.

Notice how this last one looks different, depending on your angle.

We also saw one of the fossils in the flooring.

A major installation is the mural by Thomas Hart Benton in the House Lounge called, A Social History of Missouri. Benton said all the faces were of Missouri people, except the Osage Indian, because there were no full-blooded Osage left in Missouri in the '30s, so he went to Kansas. The model for Jim in the Huck and Jim panel was a Capitol janitor who often came to watch Benton work. There were a lot of controversial items in the painting, but in the end they were too cheap to paint over it, having paid Benton $16,000 to paint the thing. It is really quite impressive. 

 In the House chamber (the Senate won't let people tour their end of the building), there is stained glass with representations of the 13 states that Missouri claims to be "the mother" of. 

 

The rotunda has a very nice dome and busts of quite a number of folks either from Missouri or who lived there and made a contribution. Thus, you have Truman, Disney, Charlie Parker, Marlon Perkins, etc.After the tour, I took pictures of quite a few. I refused to take a picture of Rush Limbaugh. Another woman and I both thought it was terrible that he was in there. Why would you put in someone still alive anyway?

 Clark and Lewis:

 Ginger Rogers and Betty Grable:

 Emmett C. Kelly and Stan Musial with cool effect that happens when you turn on your flash:

 Josephine Baker and Harry S. Truman:

 George Washington Carver and Bob Barker:

Mark Twain and Walter Cronkhite:

 Dred Scott:

I strolled through the history museum, reading the plaques that interested me. I was thrilled to see all of the attention paid to the German immigrants. '

After buying postcards and pins at the desk, I asked for a recommendation for lunch, since that worked well yesterday. I went out into the heat to take more pictures of the art outside, before getting in the car at 3:22 to move it across the street in front of Arris Pizza Palace. (You can only park where I'd been for 3 hours.)

I asked the waitress for suggestions, since I'll never be back. I wound up ordering the Arris house special, small -10"- for $10.80 and a Coke Zero for $2.49. It had homemade sausage with gyro meat spices, peppers and onions. It was delicious, if difficult to cut. It turned out that I had to resort to just eating the toppings toward the end, because I was getting too full.

 When I left at 4:24, I decided to drive around the Capitol to try to see some of the other outdoor art. Just two minutes later, I sound a spot on the curved drive behind it. I walked to the Lewis and Clark tableaux and then up to the big fountain in front of the wall sculpture of the signing of the treaty. There was a 10 Commandments, which they probably get away with by having it out there. At 4:40, I got back on the road.
The Corps of Exploration:

 The Missouri River:

 There was a detour to get on the bridge, which my GPS did not know about, but which I figured out. Everything funneled down to one lane across the bridge. Very heavy traffic. And then I noticed the gas was down to below 1/4. The further up the road I drove, the lower it got, which is weird considering how long it takes it to move off of full. I expected to find a station right near the interstate and wound up crossing over it, having seen a sign that there was a station over there. It wasn't even finished being constructed! How can you have one of those little blue info signs with it on it, if it isn't done? Luckily, I saw  a Mobil station a little further on. However, I ducked into Cracker Barrel first to use their restroom, unsure of what would be at Mobil. It was a good thing,too, since Mobil just seemed to have a liquor store. I pulled into Mobil at 5:26, with 10, 117 on the odometer. I'd gone 343 miles on this tank and I put in 10.805 gallons @$1.999. I tried washing the window, but made no dent in the marks from last night's bugs. It was 100 degrees, when I got going at 5:34.

It turned out that it was much easier to get on I 70 westbound from this side. Since this area was the northern edge of the Ozark outskirts, there was a lot of up and down driving. I stopped at 6;36 (10,188) at the last rest area in Missouri, and was back on the road in 7 minutes. It soon got harder to read overhead signs due to the angle of the sun in the western sky. 

As I went back around KC, my exit was 2L, which I thought just meant left. That is, until I saw 2Q and 2T. I have never seen more than A, B and C. This was crazy!

At 7:35, I passed the welcome to Kansas sign and realized there had been none for Missouri. At 7:52 (10,268), I picked up the toll ticket. 12 minutes and 13 miles later, I paid the $2 toll at the Lawrence exit. I was at the hotel at 8:12 (10,284), having driven  402 miles today, with much poorer radio choices.

I decided that the heat and the early hour made gelato a good idea. The front desk clerk didn't know how late they were open, so I had to go to the room to research. I headed out on foot at 8:45. Google doesn't know the difference between gelato and ice cream, because the former was closed, but the latter down toward 11th was open. I got to Sylas and Maddy's at 9:03. I chose a single scoop of Triple Fudge in a cup for $3.46. I'd realized I hadn't taken my evening meds, so I got a cup of water and sat in an old school desk to take them and eat. The ice cream was nice and thick with small chocolate pieces. Very nice, but the store was not nearly cool enough. I headed back at 9:20.  It was so hot and humid, that by the time I got back here 15 minutes later, I was dripping. The shower definitely helped!