Any trip of a few day's duration introduces the traveler to interesting personalities, and our recent Branson journey did just that. In Kansas City we toured and ate lunch at the Bingham-Waggoner Estate built in 1855. Lunch was served in the carriage house which adjoined the mansion. Several ladies graciously waited on us. My table was served by a lady who loved following the careers of rodeo bulls, and she began to tell us North Dakotans all she knew about Little Yellow Jacket, which was quite a lot. She laughed that her husband thought her hobby a bit odd, but it was what it was. Then she went on to talk about Bodacious, another past champion bucking bull. To validate to us her love of bulls she went and dug her car keys out of her coat pocket to show us the little bull dangling from the key ring.
Next, our bus stopped at the 30 room Vaile Mansion, built in 1881 by a mail contractor. Architecture buffs would have been drawn to its Second-Empire Victorian design. To me it looked as if Count Dracula might come out to meet us, but unfortunately no one did. The fact of our scheduled visit had not been passed on to its volunteer staff who were inside busily decorating for the Christmas season. Luckily we were treated to the hospitality of a welcoming lady who said to come in anyway, even though we'd have to step around the boxes of decorations. She proceeded to give a great tour of the rooms with their ceiling murals and lavish furnishings. She did not act put out by our seemingly unscheduled stop and made it every bit as rich as we could have expected.
The Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, made possible by the tenacity of its founders, told an interesting story. The Arabia ran the Missouri River from St. Louis to Kansas City until it sunk in 1856 after striking a submerged log. None of its passengers drowned, but a valuable cargo of supplies for the burgeoning westward movement sank. As the days passed the vessel sunk lower and lower into the yielding sand of the riverbed making salvage impossible. Through the decades the channel of the river changed and the steamboat's resting place was found under a cornfield. We met one of the partners who doggedly stayed with the discovery and salvage effort. Their initial plan was to sell the recovered cargo as antique items for profit. When they realized how good its quality and condition was, they felt it all needed to be kept together as a museum collection. They went deeply into debt to make the museum possible. Their persistence was admirable.
