What is there to see in Missouri?
Missouri is so green! I’m from Boise and it’s known as the city of trees…now I know why people laugh at that nickname.
We started the day with some rain and more religious sites.
The next two (labeled #1, #2) pictures are taken from the U.N. statue on international drive looking East. I hope this makes it easier to explain and understand the placement of these sites.
On the far left is the Stone Church owned by the Community of Christ.
The green lawn is known as the temple lot. The land was dedicated by Joseph Smith in hopes of building a temple there. It is now owned by The Church of Christ along with the white roofed building.
The swirled building in the center of the picture is the Community of Christ Temple.
All of these buildings were closed unfortunately but it was still wonderful to walk around and appreciate all the sights.
You can barely see a part of this building, but in the middle of these two big buildings is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Independence Visitors Center. There is a large uncovered parking lot to the east of the visitor center where you can park for free.
There’s a beautiful little tour available at the visitor center. Missionaries will take you through a few rooms and share some of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Missouri.
On the far right is the Community of Christ auditorium where “President Harry Truman formally announced that the United States was a signatory to the U.N.”
Liberty Jail
The first prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, along with other leaders, were incarcerated in Liberty Jail for four and a half months. There are missionaries that take you on a tour and explain the reasons of how that situation came to be. The very simplified reason is that the church was newly established and tons of new members were flooding into Missouri and didn’t share the same views as the people that were already established there. A lot happened, with fault from both parties I might add. Some people wanted the members of the church to leave and tried various methods of removing them from the community.
The jail is a reconstructed structure built on top of the original foundation at the original location and the visitor center was built around it. I cannot imagine what life would have been like in the basement of this jail, with only two little windows, for four and a half months, during a winter.
We took a moment, on the way to the next stop, to rainex the glass of our car because chances are, it will rain all day!
Kansas City
We didn’t get to spend a ton of time in Kansas City, but it was enough time to see Union Square and some of the sights surrounding it. We ended up parking in the Union Square parking garage which ended up being perfect because we were able to explore a little more.
We parked on the lowest level of the parking garage then walked into Union Square, took the escalator to the main floor, and headed out the main entrance. The Union square building is vast and awesome to walk through.
National WW1 Monument
As soon as you exit Union Square, you will see the tall WW1 monument in front of you on a grassy hill.
You can take the side walks on either side of the grass or use the stairs that head up closer to the memorial. We used the stairs. There were signs posted to tell us where we could go from there.
We walked all around the memorial and on the roof which has an excellent view of the city.
Money Museum
On the other side of the WW1 Memorial is the entrance to the museum and also the liberty memorial mall. There are parking spots along the mall. We walked all the way down (away from the memorial) to find the federal reserve bank which is where The Money Museum is.
This was a fun free stop. You do need a reservation time slot ticket due to covid and you need to have an ID for every adult in order to get in. When we got there, a security guard scanned our tickets and possessions, then let us in. There’s a large area with fun random facts and then you can look in the back hallway where people are preparing money to be stored in the vault. It’s held there behind massive doors until banks are running low on cash. It was a pretty neat experience. I enjoy learning more about processes that I don’t think about frequently.
Pioneer Mother
When you walk out of the money museum, there is a little hill to the left with a small paved trail to a statue dedicated to pioneer mothers.
Rock Bridge Memorial State Park
Rock Bridge is an amazing park in Columbia Missouri and just happened to be a short detour from our path towards St. Louis. We planned to just hike to Conners Cave because it was getting later in the day. But we just couldn’t stop walking!
We parked in the Devil’s icebox trail parking lot. There are a few trailheads that start here. We couldn’t find a Conners Cave trail so we ended up taking the Devil’s icebox trail. We didn’t really know what to expect, just started walking.
This lead us on a beautiful boardwalk loop that, at one point, leads down to a little trickling waterfall and a cave.
When in the Cave, the upstream portion is Devil’s Icebox and you need a guide to go in. Following downstream is Conners Cave and it just goes in a little ways.
I love caves!
We continued on down the boardwalk and saw a sign labeled The Sinkhole Trail.
We decided to follow and it took us off the boardwalk. There are three branches and we took the one to the right. I’m not sure how long the trail ended up being but it was green and filled with trees and raining. A heavenly combination.
We took a right at all the forks until we reached the Devils Icebox boardwalk again and took a left. We actually found the Sinkhole Trail again but this time took the straight trail. It lead to a natural bridge that felt like another cave! So cool!
After exploring we kept going down the dirt, by this point mud, path until we saw the parking lot on our left. Such a cool stop!
We drove the remaining hour and a half to our hotel near St. Louis, where we will be staying for the next three nights. We’re exhausted, which means it was a great day!
That looks so beautiful! I’d like to explore Missouri’s countryside.
Agreed! There are so many amazing sites to see.