Lafayette County

Our goal is to get to Denver by tomorrow at noon, so today we'd like to make it to within 4 hours of Denver.

After days of rain and driving, we're really feeling like we need to walk and move our legs, so we decided to take a 10 mile detour to The Confederate Veterans Cementery and Memorial in Higginsville, Missouri. There we found a grave site for Jasper N. Akers who died in 1904. The stones are not legible, so Doug doug up dirt with his fingers and spreaded it across the stone to highlight the lettering. Doug wonders if this could be a relative. We walked around a bit and make a bowl of Greek yogurt with agave and grapes to share as we drive. We stopped a man walking the park earlier to ask for directions and he came back to tell us about the Lafayette County Courthouse and the Anderson House Museum in Lexington about 20 minutes further up the road. Doug loves history as much, maybe even more than me, so we were all about it. We decided to head that way.

We arrived to Lexington and parked by the courthouse. We walked through the courthouse which is a functioning government building. We got directions to the museum and started walking that way. We took another detour into an antique furniture store and heard all about the history of several pieces.

This town is where the Battle of Lexington occurred in 1861. The Anderson house and museum is down a hill and then up a hill not quite a mile from the center of town. We really needed this walk. We arrived to the museum and an beautiful elder woman with long white hair was slumped over her desk, startled, and greeted us warmly. It's not a busy day at the museum. We walked through the museum and learned more about the history of the battle. The Anderson House out back is riddled with bullets and it's a somber moment as the reality of what happened here 160 years ago sinks in.

We walked back to town and saw the cannonball that is stuck in one of the courthouse columns. We took a picture of us in the center of the road again. Main Street, small town... this is becoming our signature photo.Read more