Grant's White Haven and Clydesdale's White Blazes

We had a couple of good days visiting Pamela's cousin Brian in Belleville, IL.  He lives east of Saint Louis, MO.  He played tour guide for us in Neil's fathers Buick LeSabre.  After Neil's Dad passed away in March, we put the Buick up for sale, and Brian bought it and drove it east to Belleville.  The car rides very well and we used it for a tour went into St. Louis, through East St. Louis (where you do not want to drive at night, due to safety issues) and across the Mississippi south of St. Louis to White Haven, where President Ulysses S. Grant lived, farmed and died.

Gateway Arch in Saint Louis

White Haven:  President Grant's Home Is NOT White

White Haven is home a National Park Service National Historic Site.  We watched a movie on Grant's life, which opened our eyes to aspects new to us. Then, a helpful Park Ranger gave us an outline of several aspects on the house, before a tour. As you can see the house is two unique shades of green. The lighter color is called Paris Green, so called because it was created in France with arsenic. The French discovered it worked really well to pour down sewer pipes to kill rats and prevent them from getting into homes. The darker green was created by adding sulfur to the already toxic Paris Green. These bright colors were expensive and showed your wealth. The ranger said that in the 1800's, to show off your wealth, instead of buying a sports car, you bought fancy paint for your home and high-stepping horses.

Only the first floor was available to see, due to fire hazard concerns for the upper floor. This house was originally his wife's family, the Dent's home.  Grant first visited them when stationed at Jefferson Barracks. Grant was good friends with Julia's brother, who was a classmate. During that first visit he met the sister, 17th year old Julia Dent.  They corresponded for four years, through Grant fighting in the Mexican-American War, until they were finally married. After reading the interpretive exhibits about Grant's firm belief in equal rights for all people (he freed his only slave before the Civil War), the need and value of education for all children (including Negroes and Native Americans), and how he helped heal our international relations after the Civil War, we have a far greater respect for this President and the strong family values he and Julia created.

President Grant and Julie with their four children

After visiting White Haven, we drove next door to Grant's Farm, which was land in the Grant family that is now one of three Anheuser-Busch horse farms where they raise and train the iconic Clydesdale horses for the eight horse hitches that pull the large Budweiser beer wagons.

Sizes of Horse Shoes

This will give you an great idea of how much bigger a Clydesdale is from normal size horses. In fact, a new colt weighs 125 pounds at birth and will gain 5 pounds a day eating in the first 6 months of their life!  Brian shared that the darkest horses go east to the new Hampshire farm, and the lightest in color go west to the farm in Colorado, so each farm has uniform color in their teams. Young colts start training at six months at and will be in training for over three years, to qualify to pull a wagon or what they call a "hitch".

Budweiser Transport Truck and Clydesdale Horse

All of the horses must have four white "feathered" stockings, and a white "blaze" on their forehead. They must also stand six feet tall at the withers (the highest part of a horses back) and will weigh about 2,000 pounds.  It takes three trucks to carry nine horses and two wagons for parades and events, of which they appear at over 500 events and parades a year. They carry one spare horse and an extra wagon, just in case.  Budweiser also have some of the best Super Bowl ads, in our opinion. 

Pamela with "Yankee" at Grant's Farm

While at Grant's Farm, We wandered through one of the horse barns where Pamela got to carefully pet a Clydesdale horse while we learned more about the horses and wagons.

Fences Around Grant's Farm Are Made of Civil War Rifle Barrels

Weather is still very warm-- we saw 93 degrees driving from Paducah, KY to Belleville, MO on Saturday and it was in the mid-eighties all the time we were in Belleville.  We have been fortunate to have missed most of the weather systems that have been coming up from the Gulf of Mexico into the mid west and east coast, but we hope God continues to watch over us as we head west.

Mississippi River On Our Way West

Today, we drove through St. Louis, MO and across the state on Interstate 70 towards Kansas City, Missouri. We are camped tonight just east of Kansas City and will head north up to Omaha, Nebraska, where we will follow the Oregon Trail west.  We crossed the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers today, so it feels more like we are heading west now.  We have to keep an eye out for weather in the Wyoming Rockies and we adjust our course as needed.

Neil and Pamela