Expect traditional foods, live entertainment, carriage rides, and a first-time mass yard sale event at this year's Heritage Days activities in Okawville, Illinois, June 13th and 14th, 2009. Okawville is about an hour's drive east from the St Louis Gateway Arch off US Interstate 64.
Sponsors are inviting yard salers to set up their tables in the Frank Schlosser Museum Complex on Walnut Street where they'll be featured as a single, gargantuan yard sale event.
The Schlosser Home Complex
Of course, this grand event will be only a sideline to the traditional Heritage Days events. Not the least of those are tours of the Heritage House museums. These include the Schlosser House, the adjacent harness shop and laundry, the Joseph Schlosser Home across the street where a cobbler's shop was operated out of one of the rooms, and the Robert C. Poos Home once the home of Dr. Poo. Guided tours of the homes will be available.
The Schlosser home, preserved without restoration, is listed with the National Register of Historric Places. It owes it's uniqueness to the fact that as the original Schlosser family passed away, the shops as well as individual rooms of the house were shut off by the remaining family members. Finally, the house fell silent and was abandoned for years until it was discovered, completely furnished, a time machine that allows visitors to step back into an era before electricity, since the family never installed electric power up to 1982 when the last Schlosser died.
Heritage Days Fun and Music
Besides tours and the new yard sale event, there's a book fair, carriage rides are offered, and there are numerous craft vendors.
Live entertainment will be featured on stage behind the Schlosser House and the adjacent laundry and harness shops, Entertainment will include the Venedy Band, clog dancers, bluegrass musicians, and more.
Food
Set up across from the stage are vendors of traditional homemade foods to include butter, bread, ice cream, bread, and kettle corn. There's also a snack bar set up at the rear of the grounds that will offer meal items include brats, hot dogs, and hamburgers.
Admission to the grounds is free. There is a fee for carriage rides.
Other Attractions
Other notable area sites include Okawville's Original Springs Hotel which, at the peak of mineral bath popularity, drew St Louisans to the small town for mineral baths. Mineral baths are still available although the main indoor swimming pool is not fed by the mineral springs. It is also haunted by a few benign ghosts.
Near Okawville is the hamlet of Plum Hill south of town where you'll find the Rainbow Ranch Petting Farm (on Illinois Route 15) with its camels, llamas, fainting goats, bunnies, goats, donkeys, dwarf exotic cattle including a zebu, and even a zebra.
Washington County Lake south of nearby Nashville has fishing, picnic facilities, and campsites available.
For more information about special events coming up in Southern Illinois, check out my Southern Illinois Road Trip website at http://home.midwest.net/~howes/southernillinoisroadtrip. /
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