Graveyards, Seeds, and BBQ (Day Two)

We woke up the next morning in our little cabin in the woods across from the Wilder farm. I was actually up really early, like 3:00 a.m., and I used the time to have coffee and journal and read.

You'll laugh, but this is some of my birthday haul of pens and such--but just some of it, as I didn't want to wake Dave by rooting around for everything else!

The place where we were staying was really quiet. There were squirrels running around, lots of birds, and we even saw a gray badger scampering across the road. Our little cabin faced a small pond (it was low when we were there, it had been so hot) and there was a cave nearby, the same cave that Rose Wilder Lane writes about having explored as a child. But our time was short and we didn't get to do any exploring of our own.

Instead, we had an impromptu breakfast of leftover grilled vegetables, cheese, crackers, and chips, and then we had to pack up and check out. Our morning plan was a busy one. We wanted to have a bit of a look at Mansfield before visiting the cemetery where Laura, Almanzo, and Rose are buried, then we wanted to visit the Baker's Creek Heirloom Seed Company Village. Then, on the drive back to Kansas City, we thought we might stop at a different cave, one that has tours going on all day.

I also wanted to go back while it was early in the day (and slightly cooler) to get pictures of the outside of the Wilder farmhouse. (I hadn't taken any when we visited because it was so hot I didn't want to be out wandering around in the heat.) We stopped and I got a few pictures, and then we did a bit of a tour around Mansfield. There are other Laura-related things in the town that we didn't see--I wasn't particularly interested in the Rock House that Rose built for them, nor did I care about the bust of Laura that was later put into the tiny town square--but we drove on to the cemetery.

The cemetery was on a tiny bit of land tucked into a residential area. There are some very old looking gravestones, but Laura, Almanzo, and Rose's headstones have obviously been replaced with big, shiny, modern marble headstones that are roped off from the public. Disappointing, but understandable.

These are some of the older headstones. I didn't bother to get a photo of the new ones.

There isn't much to Mansfield, as you can probably guess. (Laura and Almanzo often made the trek to Springfield, sixty miles away, to do their shopping and such, and for good reason.) But seven miles outside of town, tucked into the Ozark mountains, is Baker's Creek, home of the seed company where Dave and I have been ordering seeds for our garden for the last few years. That was our next stop.

There is a beautiful garden outside the front door where they grow a selection of their seeds. On the day we visited, there were lots of different kinds of zinnias, like this one that took my fancy.

Look at those colors! Beautiful.

My pictures do not do this place justice. There were sunflowers growing next to corn next to morning glories next to plum trees next to banana trees!

Yes, Missouri bananas. They don't mess around. And tending it all were a selection of people who look straight out of central casting, but who are really Amish and dress like they mean to stay that way.

That is about a third of the store with it's tall, baby blue seed racks. We spent a good hour or more picking out seeds.

We got lots of good stuff for the fall/winter and next spring.

Then, before we left, we visited one of the shops and picked up some amazing baked goods. I had a molasses cookie to end all molasses cookies and Dave picked up an oatmeal sandwich cookie, both about the size of our heads. And we also bought a very tasty lemon square that we shared later in the hotel.

After our visit, instead of backtracking, we took a little detour through the Ozarks along a narrow road that eventually connected with the main highway. I got a little nervous when we went from a paved to a dirt road--and the huge, black vultures sitting calmly in the road feasting on roadkill didn't help my anxiety levels--but in the end it turned out to be a lovely drive.

We also saw a couple of horse-drawn wagons on the highway, which is terrifying, kind of. I mean, I don't know what you have to do to a horse to get it to stay calm while cars whiz by at 70 miles per hour, but I don't think it's anything good for them.

Lovely though the drive was, my ramped up anxiety meant that I was not up to the cave experience, so we kept going on down the road and instead stopped and had lunch in Springfield at an amazing Peruvian (!) restaurant that Google coughed up when we asked it for vegetarian options. We shared something called "cauche de queso" which turned out to be a very tasty plate of gold potatoes, red peppers, and tomatoes with a garlicky, spicy (well, spicy for Missouri), tasty Huancaina cheese sauce. (I just looked up that sauce and, whew, it is strange. It's a mixture of aji amarillo chile pepper and queso fresco cheese, thickened with saltine crackers.) Then Dave ordered the Peruvian version of a pesto pasta and I had a chicharrone plate. My Spanish pronunciation of chicharrone was "corrected" by the waiter to the Missouri pronunciation. "CHIH-chair-on"? Ay yi yi, no.

But it was really excellent food. Peruvians are killing it in Springfield, Missouri.

We were determined to press on to Kansas City, so we looked for a Starbucks to grab some lattes. The nearest one was in a Price Chopper market, so we went there, got our lattes and used their wi-fi to make a hotel reservation for the evening. (I also made a quick pit stop and almost wish I hadn't when I followed the signs to the back of the market and found myself traversing a dimly lit, cavernous backroom that looked like a set from a horror film.)

We made it back to K.C. in time to hit up the local Dick Blick art supply store (I'm sorry and glad that we don't have one where I live because all my pennies would go to them) where I bought yet more art supplies. We checked into our hotel (which was not in K.C., but in a nearby bedroom community called Overland Park, which was in Kansas, not Missouri) and found one of the BBQ joints, Joe's Kansas City Bar-b-que, that the Kansan boy scout leader had recommended to us the day before. After lolling around the hotel room, we went out for a late dinner.

You see that plate? That is Dave's two-meat plate with brisket and pulled pork. Yes, Dave is a vegetarian--why do you ask? I had the one meat plate with brisket. We shared some coleslaw, beans, and potato salad. It was pretty good, but not great. (Greater BBQ came later, at another place.)

We rolled ourselves back to the hotel and had just enough energy to climb into our pajamas.

And that was the end of day two.