Show Me Missouri: Columbia and St. Louis (6.18.24)

I love botanical gardens.  On June 18, 2024, Dave and I visited Columbia, Missouri.  We started our day at the Shelter Gardens, a small but lush oasis on the outskirts of Columbia.  It had bright, beautiful flowers and the many accents that grace a fine garden--a lily pond, a rose garden, a waterfall, romantic statues, and even an old, abandoned schoolhouse.

I was intrigued that so many of the plants that grow in Missouri also flourish in my garden in Salt Lake, such as daylilies and coneflowers.  Northern Utah and northern Missouri both have long, hot summers and cold winters, but it is wetter and more humid in Missouri.

We also visited the Devil's Icebox, a hike through a lush forest and inside a wide, low tunnel through which a stream flowed over boulders.

We planned to spend the day in Columbia.  However, the museums at the University of Missouri were closed, as was the well-reviewed automobile museum.  We realized we were only two hours from St. Louis, and we hurried there to see its Civil War Museum.

The Civil War Museum was located at Jefferson Barracks, the US Army base where Ulysses S. Grant served when he graduated from West Point.  He met and married his wife, Julia, while at Jefferson Barracks.  Julia's father was a Missouri slaveholder, and I could better understand Missouri's strange position, poised between North and South, as I learned about Julia owning her own slaves yet marrying a Northerner who would later lead the Union Army.  After the Civil War, Julia remained a good friend of the wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

I recently read a biography of Ulysses S. Grant and since then have visited many sites related to his life.  I have seen the cabin in Ohio where Ulysses was born, his farm in St. Louis, the site of his great military triumph in Vicksburg, and his post-Civil War home in Galena, Illinois. I remember the old joke, "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" and I want to visit that tomb in Riverside Park in New York City.   Ulysses S. Grant was a fascinating man who failed at many jobs, yet was a brilliant military leader and an underrated U.S. president.  Progress towards his vision of a reconstructed South in which blacks held public office and truly became equal with whites was made by the federal government while Grant was president, yet the South slid back into Jim Crow atrocities after he left office.

Abraham Lincoln is a hero to Dave and me, and we read as many books about him as we can and visit as many sites related to him as we can find.  Most recently, we visited his summer home near Washington D.C. where he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.  There was a fine statue of Lincoln at the Civil War Museum.

There were also fascinating artifacts from the Civil War era.

Back in Osage Beach, we ate shrimp enchiladas that were so good that we came back to the same restaurant the next night to eat them again!