The Buck Stops Here...... by Jeff

After leaving KC early Monday morning, we stopped by the Presidential Library of Harry S. Truman in Independence, MO. Very interesting place loaded with information about his life before falling into the top job. I had known much of his history from the Truman movie that HBO put out a few years back but getting to watch and hear tv clips and news conferences really was worthwhile. One would think that the library would have focused entirely on supporting Truman's decisions especially on the use of the a-bomb, but I was surprised to find that a whole wing was devoted to opposition letters and pleadings to not use it as well as plenty of letters criticizing the decision after the fact. Given the circumstances that he was placed in, who's to say whether he was right or wrong. I'd suggest that we leave it to God to decide. But what I do know is that Lynn's grandfather praised HST every chance he got because he was stationed in the Pacific and felt that HST saved his life since he didn't have to be part of a full-scale invasion of Japan. My grandfather too was in the Pacific and while I never had a chance to meet him, I suspect that he'd feel the exactly the same way.

After the history lesson, we drove to the St. Louis area and visited the Gateway Arch. It's absolutely huge. I surprised to see that it's really made of steel. I had always thought it was made of granite. Henry was the only one that wanted to go to the top. Before we got there, I thought that I wanted to, but after looking at the height and the capsule they put you in, there was just no way that I was doing it. Very nice town with the new baseball stadium across the street and the football stadium a couple of blocks away. The Cardinals were playing the Dodgers while we were there, but since we saw a game the day before, there was no reason to push Ruth back into a stadium. Underground at the Arch was a museum devoted mostly to Lewis and Clark. It was very well done, but after having followed much of their route during the trip, we had seen or heard most of the information. However, they offered a 45 minute movie narrated by Jeff Bridges that was very well done and really pulled together the big picture of what had accomplished. I'm sure we'd all highly recommend the movie.

After a quick dinner, we headed off to our campsite just across the Mississippi River into Granite City, IL. Needing sleep and a shave badly.....