And that's the way it is in St. Joseph, Missouri

The Missouri travel center handed out some great literature on the town of St. Joseph, and it did its job. We really wanted to visit this little city! Since it was on the road we were traveling, we decided to take a pit-stop here. We parked the motor home at the visitor center, and drove the car to make two stops to get a taste of St. Joseph. Our first stop was on the campus of Missouri Western University, where they are proud of a young man raised here in town--Walter Cronkite. The museum includes a timeline and pictures of young Walter, all the way through his successful news-casting career. Of course, it included his signature line that he always used to end the evening news, "and that's the way it is . . ."

During his broadcasting career, he had a personal interest in the amazing advances taking place in space travel. It took us a while to figure out what it was, but that tiny rocket at the top of this mountain of smoke is at the center of the Cronkite museum.

A room set up to replicate the newsroom of the 1960's was a fun addition to the museum. Touch the button on the table, and a picture of the current news anchor sitting at the desk automatically prints out.

Before the days of teleprompters and computer printouts, news scripts were hand-typed. At the news desk, we could read actual evening news scripts, with the last-minute-hand-written changes made by Walter Cronkite.

It was interesting to watch clips of America's best-known anchor man describing moments in history. Below we watched and listened as he described the first man landing on the moon on July 21, 1969.

Now that we learned that Walter Cronkite was raised here in St. Joseph, what other history could we find in our brief stop? We soon discovered that St. Joseph is where the first pony express rider took off on April 3, 1860. A statue in the middle of town memorializes these swift riders that carried the mail across the country. Both of us remember the pony express in our history lessons. So we were surprised to find that this method of delivering the mail only lasted for 18 months before it went bankrupt.

It was fun to read the plaques surrounding the statue, complete with the route information from St. Joseph, Missouri, all the way to Sacramento, California. It was also fun to read the wording of the advertisement that enticed 100 guys to sign up to be riders, "Wanted: young, skinny wiry fellows, not over 18. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week." As brutally true as that ad was, all the positions were filled. The riders ranged in age from 11 to 40, willing to ride day and night for 100 miles to complete their part of the express delivery.

We're sure the Pony Express Museum in town would have been a great place to spend an afternoon. But for us, our drive-by statue and informative plaques were just perfect for today. After an hour of St. Joseph touring, we are convinced that we need to return some day to spend more time. But for now we returned to the motor home to continue north. We crossed the border into Iowa--another new state for the motor home. It was good to know the people of Iowa were welcoming us into the "Fields of Opportunities."

It was a long day on the road as we pulled into a nice county RV park near Crescent, Iowa. We're planning to be here at Hitchcock Nature Center for four nights as we explore the Omaha, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs, Iowa area. The wildflowers in our little campground were a perfect welcome to our first night in Iowa. As Walter Cronkite would say, " . . . and that's the way it is!"