Purina Farms and AKC Museum

The rain decided to give us a day of reprieve. It smells really damp out here, almost like mold. One more time, I didn't remind DH to put out the rain gauge, so have no idea how much we actually got. We started the day out driving over to Grey Summit on Hwy 100, which is one of the remaining pieces of Route 66. We stopped off at the Purina Farms for a visit.
They had a Dairy Cow exhibit and a milking demonstration going on right when we arrived. Not a very big crowd, but a lot of small children and they all got a turn with the farmer showing them how to milk! I even learned that most cows produce about 40 lbs of milk per day! Some even more getting milked up to 3 times per day, every 8 hours. Brown Swiss cows and Guernsey breeds have the highest percentage of butterfat in their milk. The barn had a nice display of farm animals, minature horses, regular horses, pigs, sheep, chickens and rabbits. We walked through the domestic pet house and saw all the excited dogs, getting ready to go out into the yard and show their stuff.
A beautiful blue merle Australian Shephard and a couple of Aussie cattle dogs that were really fast in fetching and catching frisbees. This farm was one of the original sites for Dog Diving competition and we watched them demonstrate this feat with several dogs.
It's lots more fun watching it in person. From there, we continued on east and north to the AKC Dog Museum. We got to take KayCee in with us, and because of that, we spent quite a lot more time. Lucky for us, they have free admission on Tuesdays, so that was a bonus! They have an excellent display of paintings, trophys and memoribilia of many AKC Breeds.
Everybody really enjoyed meeting the house frau, and were suprised how well behaved that she is.
Onward from there, we headed east and south over to Grant's Farm, once occupied by Ulysses S. Grant, and the 260 acres is the ancestral home of the Busch family. The park closes at 3:30 in the afternoon, and it was nearly that time when we got there, so we didn't stop but drove around the perimeter and through the neighborhood surrounding the park. It was in this neighborhood that I lived as a very small child. My dad worked for August Busch II and I used to call him "Uncle Augie" I even have a porcelain doll that "Uncle Augie" gave me. I narrowed it down to the area, but didn't find the exact house or property. I'm sure it is totally different from 50 years ago, but I know I found the right neighborhood, complete with the pasture and stables for the Clydesdales. We drove once again on a piece of Route 66 on the way home, passing some old highway motels that have seen their better days, but still standing. Tomorrow we will head into the heart of the city to visit the Arch and some Sports Museums down by the river. They have a doggie day care facility that I found out about today, so KayCee will get to hang out there for a while. All this fun really can tire a person out!