Listing Through Life

St. Charles, Missouri is another of those towns filled with quaint shops, only they do it well and the buildings are old and interesting. We arrived before the crowds and browsed our way up one side of the main street and down the other.

There was a Lewis & Clark museum in St. Charles, but we glanced in the door and decided the admission price wasn’t worth it for what looked like a children’s museum. I did take the opportunity to photograph this canoe, a reproduction of one used by the Corps of Discovery. Pay no attention to the armadillo.

We I spent Saturday morning wandering up and down the streets of St. Charles, Missouri. Right in the middle of the row of old storefronts was this building.

In 1821, when Missouri was about to become a state, Jefferson City was chosen as the capital. But there was no Jefferson City at the time, so a temporary capital had to be found. St. Charles was chosen because they offered this building free of charge. For the next five years, this was the seat of the state government.

The first floor had two rooms. In one, the brothers Charles and Ruluff Peck operated a general store. In the other, they lived with their families.

We had a tour to ourselves. Our guide was an enthusiastic young woman named Ashley who tried to compare the artifacts to 21st century technology, (obviously designed to impress school children), which got annoying quickly. But as the tour continued and we showed genuine interest and friendliness, she relaxed and gave us a more personal tour.

The senate chamber

The house

The Peck Brothers store

I’ve taken many of these tours, but there’s always something new to learn. That black brick on the counter is tea. Part of a brick has been ground into the pan next to it.

The Peck Brothers living quarters

None of the furnishings were original to the building, but all were period pieces.  I neglected to take a photo of the drive-up window. It opened into the store from the carriage passageway through the center of the building.

Somewhere in my wanderings on the Internet, I discovered The Blue Owl Restaurant and Bakery in Kimmswick, Missouri and its “levee-high apple pie.” I filed it away for the next time we happened to be traveling south of St. Louis.

Kimmswick is one of those towns filled with quaint shops that cater to groups of women who are in the mood to shop but don’t have anything they need to buy. The Blue Owl tries hard to be very quaint indeed, but we thought it tried too hard. Our lunch was mediocre. They were out of regular-sized pies, so we split a small one. The bites that included caramel were good, but otherwise it was bland.

We wandered through a few of the quaint stores as long as we were in town, but we didn’t buy anything. When my wife went into a Christmas store (in the background of the next photo), I grabbed the Red Chair and took a few photos by the entrance to town.