"...And that's why Kevin Bacon was so Successful. Everyone loves Bacon. If it had been Kevin Ham...or Ground Beef..."

Last we left off I was climbing on the Ball of Twine in lovely Cawker City, and I would like to take this time to ponder the reason that in most of these towns housing such amazing and precious attractions, I felt like I may or may not get knifed before snapping my pics and heading on my way. At the BoT there were 2 hoodlums racing around the block housing the BoT playing loud music and being hoodlummy. They clearly hate all things BoT including intrepid pilots who make a quick stop to check it out. I doubt they participated in the Twine-a-Thon the third weekend of August every year.

Moving on. Day 4 was a big day, though did not have many attractions planned, so we were relying on the POI we found along the way. One thing I do love to do is go into old houses and snoop around. So, I was pretty excited when I found a sign for the Harry S. Truman house and olden times jail. I thought yes! A chance to redeem myself from the tragedy that was the closed frontier prison, and I would be able to poked around the homestead of the ??th president. Wrong. We drove deep into the heart of Independence, MO only to find that the Harry S. Truman house was not open and there was a huge fence around it so I couldn't even go peek in the windows. The olden times jail was also closed.




I was determined to make lemonade out of these lemons, so I demanded we go instead to the Pioneer Museum nearby. $10 and 10 minutes of browsing later, we didn't even get to poke real artifacts. The museum focused mostly on the Lewis and Clark trail which unfortunately I already learned about in great length in elementary school. The lady at the front desk touted the real diary excerpts housed in the museum because they had some awesome artifact library. "Real diary excerpts" = "typed up papers printed out not even on old timey looking paper." Total bust.




So now we have wasted 1 hour in Independence, MO, and I do not feel at all like I was "where it all began." as the signage promised me. The day was not a total loss, however. After Independence we went through St. Louis and got to see those cool arch things. (We saw them while driving by, no time for stopping as Independence received our allotted attraction viewing time.)



We were able to squeeze in some time to view the World's Largest Catsub Bottle in nearby Collinsville, IL. Unfortunately, it is not filled with ketchup, but awesome nonetheless.












We rounded out day 4 by crossing into Kentucky and arriving at Kyle and Nicole's house in Fort Knox where we will spend the next 4 days before finishing our trip to DC!