By Jo Schaper
I’m a country girl at heart. Though I’ve always lived on that undefinable border between St. Louis Metro and rural Missouri, I really hate to go into the tall-towered heart of the city, neither downtown St. Louis nor, especially, Clayton.
Last night I spent five hours in Clayton, two outside with the [...]

The 9th Missouri Confederate Sharpshooters reenactors take their Missouri history seriously.
Traveler Extra by Jo Schaper
Just ask Mrs. Helen Wright, originally of Leasburg, now living in Cuba. I’ve never met Mrs. Wright, (hence, no photographs) but she must be a powerhouse. As the 74-year-old co-chair of the Battle of Leasburg, all roads seemed to lead [...]

Road Log from Ft. Davidson to Leasburg Battle Site
By Jo and Bill Schaper
If you choose to take this road log, we recommend four maps: Missouri highway map, and Washington and Crawford county highway maps. The US Forest Service Salem/Potosi Ranger District map can substitute for the county maps. The attached illustration [...]

Driving Ft. Davidson to Leasburg – a trip back into time
by Jo Schaper
(Ed. note: this story jumps to two related others: A long version of the road log in the print paper, and a shorter story interview with Mrs. Helen Wright, one of the chairpeople of the Leasburg Reenactment about a group of reenactors who [...]

August 25 – The sharp, sweet, heady odor of slightly sun-fermented grapes fills my kitchen tonight.
The Concord grape harvest is in: all 6.5 pounds of it. The grapes entirely fill a two-gallon stockpot…the largest piece in a typical cookware set.
I put the lid on the big pot before the aroma alone knocked me [...]

It was a struggle to get out of bed on a Saturday morning with the lightning flashing, the thunder crashing, and the rain blowing sideways. I was committed to go to Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center to take some copies of Traveler to their Hunting Clinic. I really would have rather rolled [...]

Jo took off a couple days this past week to help out the folks at the YMCA of the Ozarks in Potosi. The Y at Sunnen Lake hosted a national organization, the Family Nature Summit from August 1st to the 7th. This gathering, now an independent non-profit, began in the early 1970s, under the [...]

To get the context for this story, read Colorado whitewater rafting story first. Then come back here. – Jo
by Jo Schaper
I mentioned earlier that our whitewater hosting company provided motel shuttles.etting around town proved not to be much of an issue: Glenwood Springs, for now, has free bus service running up and [...]

Whitewater on the Upper Colorado: Missouri floating was never like this.
by Jo Schaper
As the story about John Wesley Powell in the July Traveler hints at, I’ve always secretly wanted to paddle the Colorado River. When the opportunity came up a week ago to run Colorado whitewater through part of Glenwood Canyon, above and through Glenwood [...]

(The next few articles are about Jo’s recent outdoor adventures in the Rockies and how they relate to her life back home in the northern Ozarks. She thought she’d share. Enjoy.)
It’s hard to ignore elk in Colorado. The bighorn sheep may be the official state animal, but elk have got to come in a [...]