We got a rather late start after a “see you next time” visit with our cousins Donna and Ed, and reached Bentonville a little after 6:00 p.m. by minimizing our stops. This 350 mile drive was our longest one day drive of our trip. That does not mean the day was uninteresting, even though it almost all passed by at 70+ mph.

Our first stop was in Cuba, MO, about 80 miles southwest of St. Louis. I stopped for a short break because a sign announced Cuba as The Mural City. That is not accurate. It does have a lot of murals (I assume as part of a goal of enticing tourists to visit), but it sure isn’t a city. Here are four examples.

The only other interesting thing in Cuba was a salon (no, not saloon) sign:

Our next stop, at lunch time, was Rolla, a bigger town and home of the Missouri University of Science and Technology. But there wasn’t much else there. I assume that depression must run rampant, so much so that the one cafe we found stated this:

I can see why Rolla native Claire McCaskill of US Senate and MSNBC fame didn’t stick around her home town.

We drove on and made our final interim stop in Neosho, a town of about 14,000 near both Arkansas and Oklahoma. Neosho held a number of surprises. It has a very large old fashioned southern style town square with a courthouse in the center

It has a mural depicting former resident George Washington Carver

And it has dozens of houses with unique stone exterior walls. I don’t know the geology, but you can see this type of stone in situ through the road cuts.

One other stop we made was at Redmon’s Candy Factory “in” Philipsburg, a town that may not really exist. It was very, very crowded. What a business plan they have.

On a literary front, we did stop in a small used book store in Neosho that had a children’s section that was much bigger than its adult section. Nevertheless, honoring the tradition that any visit to a used book store should involve the purchase of at least one book, I took out my divining rod and found for $5 a copy of Wanderings signed by Chiam Potok (not in the best shape). Then we bought two books for grandchldren, one a biography of Sacajawea from an Indian perspective, the other a picture book about desert animals and plants.

After we checked into our suite (we were upgraded) at La Quinta (the suite is in good condition but looked like it was upgraded in 1980 or so), we went to a nearby Indian Kerala restaurant and had a veggie curry and a fish curry served with kappa (you can look it up), not rice. So good we might go back tomorrow for more.