ShareBy Tom Uhlenbrock
Missouri State Parks
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Linda Endersby had a ready answer when asked for the strangest item in the collection of the Missouri State Museum. “Ella Ewing’s shoes,” she said. “They’re size 24s.”
Endersby is the director of the museum, which is in the State Capitol building in Jefferson City, and she knows [...]

ShareJEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Horseback riders now have a new Katy Trail State Park experience with the opening on March 31 of the Tebbetts-to-Portland section in Callaway County for equestrian use. A ceremony to commemorate the opening was held on Saturday, March 31 at the Mokane trailhead, which serves as the official horse trailer parking [...]

ShareBy Jo Schaper
Tomorrow morning, when Michael Clark of Big Muddy Adventures, John Ruskey of Quapaw Canoe Company, David Hanson, adventure journalist, and Mark Peoples, a 1Mississippi River Guide intern, put their paddles into the Bourbeuse River at the Union, Missouri boat ramp, after having begun in Washington, MO, and [...]

SharePart of Jo’s husband’s job means he travels all over the state. He’s rarely without a camera, (and just figured out how to use the camera on his cell phone for when that happens.)
A couple weeks ago life took him to Big Lake State Park. If you usually stay on the eastern or southern [...]

ShareWith the Birds Point Levee being rebuilt on the Mississippi and flood recovery efforts underway in northwest Missouri, Senator Roy Blunt, backed by Senator Claire McCaskill are reevaluating the way the Army Corps of Engineers is spending its money.According to this article on STL Today, Blunt is attempting to transfer $50 million dollars of money [...]

ShareThere are some things one simply never expects to do in one’s life.
By Jo Schaper
Meeting Governor Jay and First Lady Georgeanne Nixon whilst wearing jeans, a caver T-shirt and a caving helmet, setting up, running kid tours and crawling around in a portable cave on the Missouri Governor’s Mansion lawn, helping to cycle 337 [...]

Share“Huzzah!” yelled the cannonneer in a clean, dark blue Union uniform. The big gun roard at his side, fire and smoke billowing from the throat. The sting of freshly burned powder smarted in my eyes, from about 40 feet away.
I looked down at the lady in the lawn chair in front of me, [...]

ShareThe Missouri River 340 river race, which was scheduled to run in July, will be held Oct. 11-15, according to race organizer Scott Mansker. The race from Kansas City to St. Charles was postponed this summer because of severe flooding on the river.ace organizers attempted to replace the race with the Kansas 150 from Manhattan, [...]

ShareA few months ago, Jo attempted to give a play by play of the swollen Mississippi and southeast Missouri rivers as our region suffered. The geographic location has shifted northwestward, but the suffering is the same. Mercifully, the Missouri below Kansas City has been spared what the Nebraska-Iowa-Kansas Tri-State region is enduring. These photos and [...]

ShareWhen the river floods, and you want to paddle, ya do what ya gotta do.
The organizers of the Missouri River 340 have had to shorten and move the race upstream in order to hold it at all.
By Jo Schaper
Regretfully, that means to Kansas. The race, which has started from Kaw Point in [...]