Adventuremoon Part 2: Southwestern Missouri - Country Music and Mexican Food

One of the best parts about our road trip was seeing beautiful parts of the country that are less traveled - at least by those of us that have spent most of our time on the coasts.

Table Rock Lake in Missouri was very beautiful through the rain and mist (try to ignore the power lines below).

When I was younger, I went at least a couple times to Silver Dollar City, an 1880s-craft village-themed amusement park. This sounds a little silly, but at least when I was in fifth grade, it was pretty cool. While we skipped the amusement parks this time, we did go to see the Grand Jubilee, a sort of Americana revue. Elvis, Beatles, lots of patriotic songs, and some gospel (different than the kind we heard in Liberia). The photos below are pretty fuzzy, but give you an idea of the kind of show it was.


We were pleasantly surprised by the high number of Mexican restaurants we found -and not just chain restaurants or Tex-Mex places, but little, hole-in-the-wall, family run places. Our second night in Hollister (just outside of Branson), was rainy and cold, and a big bowl of tortilla soup - garnished with hefty quarter of an avocado - was perfect.

I read about Hermann, Missouri, a small town a couple hours outside of St. Louis in a New York Times article, so we stopped there for a night.

I liked the cheeky sign for this little church.

Although not quite as grand as the Mississippi, the Missouri River is quite beautiful and broad, too.

In addition to being beautiful, the Midwest was...different.

All in all, a pretty good couple of nights.