Road Trip Through History
Road Trip Through History: The National Brewery Museum
Some museums are the road trip equivalent of a destination wedding: you plan the trip for the purpose of visiting that museum. Some museums are must-sees. (Though I must admit that we’ve missed a few of those on previous Great River Road adventures because of scheduling difficulties. *Sigh*) And others are a fun stop when…
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Road Trip Through History: Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button
The nineteenth century button industry based on fresh-water mussels was a recurring theme of our ten days on the Great River Road this year. In 1891 a German button manufacturer named John Frederick Boepple opened a button factory in Muscatine, Iowa, after a change in tariff laws caused his business in Germany to fail. Shell…
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Road Trip Through History: Little House in the Big Woods
I grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, not far from Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House books, lived from 1897 to her death in 1957. I remember being thrilled when my family took a day trip to visit her home, probably in the late 1960s soon after it was made…
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