Driving Across Missouri – A Guide to I-70
Driving across Missouri is packed with fun-filled information, stories, and trivia that help travelers look beyond the billboards to appreciate the “Show Me” state’s unique landscapes and landmarks. Its authors unfold the natural beauty of the state’s flora, fauna, and rivers (including two of the world’s largest); introduce the history of Native Americans, French explorers, and German settlers; reopen routes traveled by Daniel Boone and Lewis and Clark; and bring the Civil War era to life.
The entries are tied to mile markers for travelers driving either east or west—no need to “transpose,” because the authors have done it for you. Cable and Cadden tell the story behind Boone’s Lick Trail at mile marker 194.0 and point out likely roosts for red-tailed hawks. They entice you to take Exit 170 to explore Graham Cave State Park, or 148 to visit the Winston Churchill Memorial at Fulton. And within the city limits of Kansas City and St. Louis, where mile markers often aren’t visible, they guide the reader to notable features like the former’s Jazz Museum or the latter’s landmark churches.
Driving across Missouri provides more detail for “ordinary” landscape features than can be found in most other guidebooks, whether relating the story behind the “Meramec barn” or using cornfields as a point of departure to discuss “Missouri Meerschaums”—the corncob pipe.
Through their vastly entertaining book, Cable and Cadden help to slow things down in the fast lane so that travelers can enjoy Missouri’s land and history, while simultaneously making a long trip pass more quickly with stories that interpret the spirit of this great “Show Me” state. And, used in conjunction with Cadden's other book, "Traveling Through Illinois: Stories of I-55 Landmarks & Landscapes Between Chicago & St. Louis," readers can now enjoy the ride all the way from Kansas City to Chicago and back again.
About LuAnn Cadden (St. Joseph, Missouri Author)
LuAnn Cadden peddled books for years for Barnes & Noble, Borders, and other bookstores before she finally started writing them. While a Naturalist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, she wrote magazine and research journal articles and interpretive trail guides. Her love for travel, interpretation, and writing led her to write a guide for an unconventional trail, Interstate 70 in "Driving Across Missouri," published by the University of Kansas. Her goal was to help travelers of the fast-paced interstate see beyond the billboards through the stories of the people that live and work along the route and of the history and natural landscape they are driving through. In her second book, "Traveling Through Illinois," published by the History Press/Arcadia publishing, she tells stories along I-55 about her beloved native state.
She was commissioned as the editor and as an author of a travel CD produced for the Missouri Department of Transportation and local Convention and Visitors Bureaus across the state called "Missouri Highway 36: The Way of American Genius."
Cadden has a B.S. in English/Writing from Illinois State University and a B.S. in Education from Missouri Western State University. She supplements her writer's folly as a copy editor, public speaker, and school librarian and resides on historic Lovers Lane in St. Joseph, Missouri. You can reach her with any comments or questions about her books at luann.cadden@gmail.com.
About Ted Cable (Co-Author)
TED T. CABLE is an award-winning leader in environmental education and interpretation in the United States. He has consulted on conservation projects in more than 25 states, has designed several nature parks and preserves, and has worked extensively on conservation projects in Latin America and Africa. Currently a professor of Park Management and Conservation at Kansas State University, Dr. Cable is the author of 13 books and more than 150 articles on conservation and travel. He is a Fellow of the National Association for Interpretation and has been honored by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for outstanding teaching in the field of environmental education and cultural and natural interpretation.
