So with the workload soon to be increasing at my real business my wife, Nicole and I decided to get away for a few days. Nicole wanted to go to Missouri Star Quilt Shops again in Hamilton, MO. I voted against taking the Jeep and the roof top since the weather was predicted to be in the mid to upper 90’s. As much as I love camping, I don’t want to spend my night sweating in canvas while trying to sleep.

So with the holiday weekend we scheduled what shops would be open and closed. With this trip it would be to states that I’ve never been to and I found it to be a great oppretunity to get some geocaches in states that I’ve yet to visit.

We departed on Thursday night. We were ultimately headed to Liberty, MO. We stopped for the night outside of St. Louis. Friday morning, after finding a geocache and getting the sourvnier for Illinois, we headed towards Liberty to visit Quilting is My Therapy. It is quaint little quilt shop in the downtown of Liberty. I love the simple brick buildings, wood floors and exposed ducting. While there, I mentioned to Nicole that, Pawhuska, OK, the home of Pioneer Woman is only 4 hours away. We decided to head that direction. I reserved us a hotel for Saturday night in Pawhuska.

As we were driving south we entered into Kanas. We over nighted at a hotel on Coffey, KS. Saturday morning we woke, ate the hotel continental breakfast and hit the road. We found a quick PNG, (Park and Grab) for you “muggles” to get the Kansas souvniour. As we drove on through southern Kansas into Northern Oklahoma the landscape was amazing. To see wide open grassland, and big blue sky was mesmerizing. We arrived in Pawhuska mid day. We went to Pioneer Woman's Mercantile. There they have many souvenir items such as shirts, and hats. There are also a lot of kitchen wares. On the second floor is where the Pioneer Woman’s Bakery is located. There is a sweet treat for most anyone. While at the ‘Merc we also elected to take the drive out to Pioneer Woman’s Lodge. This is where she films her show. It was interesting to see the set of her show and the additional kitchen where much of the cooking is done.

After we left the Lodge we drove back to town and checked into the Frontier Hotel. This is a beautifully restored building that has been converted to a hotel. The building is in a triangle shape in the heart of Pawhuska. Our room was clean and spacious. We decided to go to P-Town Pizza for dinner. Here we had some “not knots” and we had a Steakhouse and a Marghe-Ree-Ta pizza. The food was very good and we took the left overs back to the our room.

After a restful night at the Frontier Hotel, we were on our way north. We left Oklahoma and entered Kansas. Our plan was to go north in the Nebraska and get a geocache then proceed back into Missouri and get closer to Missouri Star, located in Hamilton, Missouri. We motored into Nebraska and found a geocache in Falls City then we headed to St. Joseph, MO. We relaxed and did some more geocaching. After finding a few and spending the night we headed to Hamilton, Missouri. Hamilton is a quiet little town brought back to life Missouri Start Quilt Company. There are numerous quilt shops, current count of 14, that span the entire downtown. This is also the place where the first JC Penny store was located. I found the history of this small town to be quite interesting.

From Hamilton, we headed north into Iowa and found a cache to obtain the Iowa souvenir. Then we got on Interstate 80 and headed back east to home. In all we were in 7 states, about 1900 miles in 5 days. It was a lot of driving but some of the wide open country is absolutely amazing to see first hand. The old architecture, the restored buildings, the variety of food made this a very memorial trip.