Lewis & Clark Adventure: Columbia, Missouri

Well, we were supposed to camp at Cooper's Landing Campground near Providence, Missouri.  It is situated in a beautiful location, right on the Missouri River, near a spot where old Lewis and Clark themselves camped and right on the Katy Trail. It was indeed a beautiful location, etc, but the campground itself looked so trashy and I swear I could hear banjoes playing. We decided to abandon this place and quickly found a nice campground right in Columbia, Mo, about 15 miles away. We are so happy we did.

We stayed at Pine Grove Village Campground. It was well groomed, full service except for cable TV, and very convenient to everything in Columbia that we wanted to see.

While in Columbia we watched the local TV station tell about the thunderstorms and a tornado heading or way. The first prediction was that it would pass far south of Columbia in about two hours. Then they predicted it would hit Columbia in one hour. We love Diva, our Airstream, but we left her to face the possible tornado on her own. We left Columbia around 8PM, gathering only a few medications, some important papers, and of course, my MacBook Pro, and drove east, away from the thunderstorms and tornadoes. We hung out at a truck stop, 30 miles away, under the canopy, for about 2 hours and then returned. On our way back we saw a huge tree blown over and one telephone pole turned over with electric wires on the ground as well. When we got back to Diva there were only small twigs and leaves strewn all over but not a scratch on her. We got lucky!

Downtown Columbia made us feel like we were back in Asheville, NC.
A Yellow Dog Book Shop right next to a Hookah lounge. And a Prius parked out front!

We loved they way the downtown is laid out. There is an about eight city block by eight city block district, named by some coincidence, "The District" filled with shops, restaurants, coffee cafes, hookah lounges, ice cream places. This district is surrounded by three colleges: 1)University of Missouri, which just had one its' football stars, Michael Sam, become the first openly gay man to be drafted into the NFL,  2) Columbia College, and 3) Stevens College .This is a great arrangement allowing students for the three colleges to walk or use bicycles to get around. We went to a fantastic production of RESPECT! The Musical, produced by the theater department of Stevens College. 

A student basks in the sun at the University of Missouri.

The University of Missouri is a gorgeous campus and a great school

Rocheport, MO, is a small town about 30 miles west of Columbia. It is on the Missouri River and Lewis and Clark camped near here. The Katy Trail is also here and we walked some of it. We were going to bring our bikes but it looked like rain for sure. As you can see, the sun was poking though while we were here.  Pretty nice for a US Post Office to have hanging baskets with flowers.

And here is a Black & White.

The Arch From Below

Next stop: Council Bluffs, IA where the Corps of Discovery pow-wowed with several Native American tribes, but not the largest tribe, the Omaha who were away hunting.

Ciao, Frank