A Psychiatric Museum? That's Crazy!

After another very windy trip on the Interstate, we arrived at St Joseph, Missouri. When we tried to check into the Super 8, we found out that there was a NASCAR race meeting in nearby Kansas City and all accommodation within about an hours drive had been booked out long before. The motel clerk was kind enough to call around and found one smoking room available at a Best Western motel further down the Interstate (not what we wanted but it looked like we had little choice). As we were about to head off, we decided to just check the Ramada next door and found they had one room left. As we were checking in, the clerk fielded several phone calls from others looking for a room so once again, our luck held. We also managed to find a replacement helmet lead for Ric’s helmet from the local Honda dealer so we were once again on speaking terms.

Like so many other places we stopped at, we found that St Joseph is steeped in history. It is the place where the Pony Express was established and we visited the Pony Express Museum. Everyone has heard of the Pony Express but what we did not know was that it only lasted 19 months and then went bust as it failed to win the necessary government contract.

We also found out that it was in this town that Jesse James was gunned down – and we visited his house where it happened. But the strangest place we visited was the Glore Psychiatric Museum in a psychiatric hospital. Here we learned about how mental illness was regarded in the past and some of the more recent treatments for mental illness. It was interesting but also a little disturbing.

We stayed in St Joseph for two days as thunderstorms were predicted for Sunday and indeed, the thunder, lightning and rain arrived on Sunday afternoon, exactly as predicted. Monday was a riding day - we rode 300 miles (across half of Kansas) in magnificent weather. Monday night sees us staying in Winfield, Kansas for the night and looking at an early departure to beat more predicted thunderstorms.