California or Bust, Day 4 | IA to NE, via MO
Day Four was going to be the official start of our journey on the Oregon/California/Mormon Trails (and occasionally the Pony Express route). But first, we couldn’t pass through Madison County without seeing its famous bridges…Okay, ONE of its famous bridges. We were running behind (shocking, I know), and I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time at our first trail destination.
There was quite a bit of graffiti decorating the inside of the bridge. I get the feeling that it is sort of accepted, but I chose not to leave my own mark (leave no trace. y’all). I did, however, really appreciate the Coldplay quote from Fix You.
Unfortunately, this is also the point where Elijah started to feel unwell. It made for a long drive and a few extra stops, but he was such a trooper.
We made it to our main destination of the day, the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, MO. Hey former Oregon Trail players, does that city sound familiar? It should, since it was the main “jumping off” point for all the westward trails the overland emigrants used, and in the game, it was where you’d blow all your money on too many guns and not enough medical supplies.
We had about an hour to explore the museum before it closed. Luckily, it isn’t a very big museum, but it’s packed full of information and artifacts from the pioneers’ journey. The kiddos even got to pack a scaled-down version of a pioneer wagon with items suggested for a five month journey on the trail. When they went over the limit of what their wagon would hold, a red light would flash on. Too bad the emigrants didn’t have this technology at the beginning of their journey, it would’ve saved a lot of heartache, I’m sure.
While they were having their fun with the wagon, I was able to explore. For such a small space, there was definitely plenty of information to appease my inner history geek.
I even found something for my honey in the gift shop!
The other awesome gift shop find was trail guides. There was one for each by state, with a highlighted map and little blurbs about each point of interest along the trails. Best of all, they were free! Where were these bad boys when I was trying to plan our route? That being said, I managed to plot the exact same route for the California Trail that was outlined in the guides. *pats self on back*
That being said, it put the emigrants’ preparation into a whole new light. Most of the time, the early pioneers had nothing to go by except some letters describing landmarks, a crudely drawn and most definitely not to scale map, and the castoffs and ruts of any that had gone before them. Luckily, we had it a bit easier on our trip.