We're in Springfield Missouri and something strange happened, the sun was out and it was warm enough to leave the door and windows open, we haven't really seen the sun for about a week now. We're camped a little south of Springfield in the city of Ozark, that just sounds so Red Neck, doesn't it.
Today we drove over to Wilson Creek National Battlefield, they have a 20 minute film explaining the battle, this was the first major battle since the Confederate victory at Bull Run. The battle was fought on August 10, 1861 between 6000 Union army troops led by General Nathaniel Lyon and 5200 Missouri State Guard led by General Sterling Price and 6800 Confederate troop led by General Ben McCulloch. After five hours of battle the Union forces retreated back to Springfield, General Lyons had been killed in battle along with over 2500 hundred soldiers, General Lyon became the first General Officer killed in the Civil War.From the Visitors center there is a five mile auto tour around the battlefield and a museum located just outside the park which is covered with your admission.
The museum is small but really well organized, it covers the Battle of Wilson Creek and then it has displays covering all the major battles of the Civil War and then a lot of stuff on the Missouri Border Wars with Jessie James and Quantrill's Raiders, it also has some very unique artifacts. From here we headed into Springfield were we stopped at the Springfield / Greene County Library for their Friends of the Library Book Sale, it was huge and we ended with about another 30 pounds to haul around in the motor home.
While looking for the Post Office in Ozark we came across this little bit of information.
It's overcast today but not raining so we're going to give the zoo a try today, once we got there I figured out that I forgot my camera, which turned out not to be a bad thing since this was a very disappointing zoo, about the only thing that was worth while was the elephants, and the rest of the place was just dirty and dingy. It looked like they had about 500-700 man hours tied up in decorating the zoo for Halloween and Zero for cleaning or sweeping anything.
After leaving the zoo we just wandered around the city taking a look see, it appears that the city is under going a rebuilding, most of the run down area downtown is being rebuilt into a yuppie type area and there are new suburbs and shopping centers going in everywhere.
Today we almost witness HELL freezing over, by that I mean it was in the mid thirties and we were in Branson, Missouri, you can't get any closer then that.
We decided that we were only 30 minutes from from Branson so we might as well give it a try, besides Cathy has been wanting to go to Penny Gilliy's restaurant, she kept seeing her ads on the Imus show when he was on RFD-TV. We did two loops through the town, at about 2 mph, before we found it, it's Louisiana Cajun type food and was worth the trouble to find it. We found Branson to be like a combination of Gatlinburg, Myrtle Beach & Disney, 5000 restaurants, 5000 shows, 5000 shops and anything else that could grab your money and everybody driving 2 MPH trying to see everything. I think part of the problem is that we have not reached our 8th decade yet and are just to young to appreciate it.
It went down to about 35 last night but the sun is out and it's warming up fast, so before we settle in for Michigan football we're going to drive over to The Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden in Nathanael Greene Park, this is a small section of the park that receives very little if any financial support from the city is is maintained by volunteers. We spent a very peaceful hour wandering around the garden, along with the Battlefield this would be another thing to be sure to 
see. After all that walking and 
exercise we decided to stop at Culver's for a burger on the way home, it was kind of sad because this is the southern most Culver's (Besides Branson and we all know how I feel about that place) and we won't be able to have another one
until our trip north in the spring.
After being in Missouri for the better part of a month I think I now know how the State motto came to be. If any one from Missouri ever comes up to you and sez “I'm from Missouri, SHOW ME” they really mean it, they want you to show them how to do what ever it is because they can't figure it out by themselves.
OK, Collage ball the rest of the day and Pro ball tomorrow then we're off to Little Rock Arkansas, where we expect rain but hope it will be warmer.
Penn State is making the Michigan Wolverines look like a bunch of Wimps, go ahead and laugh Bernie.
