I love that we're getting back to little road trips, but boy is it hard to write them up when you have a chatty 6-year-old. And no lie, in the middle of me typing that sentence she ran in here to have me log onto her tablet so she could get into an Outschool class, and corrected one of my typos (a direct result of being interrupted) while I typed in the PIN. SERENITY NOW! Anyway, I know the attention span for blogs has disappeared in the past 10 years, so I'll keep this brief and split this into multiple posts. Our last road trip included Marceline, MO, Walt Disney's "Hometown" and the inspiration for Main Street USA in the Disney Parks. He wasn't born in Marceline, and didn't live there for long, but he did famously say, "To tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have ever happened since, or are likely to in the future." He lived there from ages 5-10, and I think we can all agree these are some of the most formative and inspirational years of a kid's life, especially when they are allowed to exercise their creativity. Walt credited his "belly botany" studies, laying under the "Dreaming Tree" and learning to draw, as inspiration for Silly Symphony and Mickey Mouse. The Disneys moved from Chicago to this farm on the outskirts of Marceline, which you can still visit today. The farm is privately owned, and they generously allow folks to visit Walt's old "Dreaming Tree" and barn. The barn structure is only about 20 years old, built from the plans for the barn Walt had built for his home in California, and used as a workshop for his model railroad. The original Dreaming Tree, where Walt played and learned to draw as a boy, no longer stands, but a "Son of Dreaming Tree" was planted in 2004.
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