Heading West

Our annual drive from Burgin, KY to Omaha, NE for the Lauritzen Gardens Antique Show puts us in northern Missouri/southern Iowa right around sunset every time. The sight of the sun dipping behind the Missouri River and disappearing from the big sky is a reminder of the natural beauty of this region which many people back home would dismiss as flat and boring. It also steers the imagination back to the days of Lewis and Clark and their travels long ago when this land was the home of many different native tribes and what it would have been like to be a foreign explorer here. Even though this would have been an easier stretch of their journey, it took about nine weeks for them to get from St. Louis to Omaha, a distance we cover in about seven hours, all in a truck laden with furniture and other wares that pre-date that historic expedition. Contradictions and juxtapositions can captivate the mind on a 13-hour drive. I can only imagine the mental voyages involved in a 2-year grueling trek across the Rockies to the Pacific and back again using early 19th Century technologies. Oh, well. Trevor flies out tomorrow to follow in those footsteps as the truck makes its way over the mountains and to San Francisco for the Fall Art & Antique Show next week. We hope to see you there.