Joplin Missouri

No beautiful pictures in this blog entry. On our way to Florida, we stopped in Joplin, Missouri to see the aftermath of the tornado that hit in May. The devastation left us speechless.

But everywhere you could see the spirit of the town.

This is St. John's Hospital. Notice the tree in the foreground. All of the trees were stripped of limbs - but many still had leaves.

This is a typical neighborhood.

There were colorful stars all over town with words like "love," "hope" and "faith."

This must have been a parking garage.

Bill and I rode around the town in silence, not believing what we were seeing. We thought about our own little adventure with our burglary - and felt incredibly fortunate.

Joplin is about half an hour from our very good friends Mike and Mel in Shell Knob where we spent a wonderful weekend visiting, eating, fishing, eating, relaxing, birding - and just having a great time.

Mike and Mel had a couple of other visitors - two furry taranchula spiders...

and this exceptional specimen.