Missouri - updated
From the 50 State Visitor Guide :
R.S. Mo. 2019. R.S. Mo. §43.650. R.S. Mo. §566.147 through 566.150. R.S. Mo. §§589.400 through 589.426. AWA Compliant .
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
3 days for initial registration and updates.
"Residence" is defined as “any place where an offender sleeps for seven or more consecutive or nonconsecutive days or nights within a twelve-month period” §589.404(5).
Visitors: “Any registered offender from another state who has a temporary residence in this state and resides more than seven days in a twelve-month period shall register for the duration of such person's temporary residency” §589.400.11. However, “temporary residence” is not defined.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
Residence restriction: offenders may not reside w/in 1,000 ft. of school or child care center. §566.147.
Presence restriction: offenders cannot be present w/in 500 ft. of school, day care center, park with playground equipment, childrens athletic facility, pool, or Missouri department of conservation nature or education center. §§566.147-566.150. Updated Aug. 2022.
Missouri applies Halloween restrictions to all registrants, including sign posting mandate. §589.426. However, as of Oct. 2023 this requirement is under a restraining order pending a lawsuit brought by ACSOL.
Duration & updates:
15 years to life. Updates: Tier III – 90 days. Tier I & II – every 6 mo. §589.400
Most recent visit: April & May 2025
Missouri is a beautiful state, but you’ll have to be pretty darned careful if you travel there. Visitors must register if in the state for more than 7 days in a 12-month period. §589.400.11. That makes this state precisely twice as restrictive as Indiana, which allows visitors 7 days in any six month period. However Missouri defines “residence” as a place where you sleep. So presumably, like Illinois, if you can drive through without ever stopping to sleep that partial day won’t count against your annual total – but if you do stop to sleep the partial days on both sides of that restful night will count and you will have chewed up two of your annual 7 day total.
Worse, Missouri imposes several onerous restrictions that you should assume will apply to you as a visitor:
•
Offenders may not reside w/in
1,000 ft. of a school or child care center.
§566.147. Since I am from
Florida, where similar restrictions apply, I can tell you 1000 feet can be a
pretty hard standard to meet. Be careful
in selecting your motel room.
•
Missouri used to apply Halloween
restrictions to all registrants, including a sign posting mandate.
§589.426. However, recently ACSOL took
the state to court and there’s now a restraining order in place against the state. So for now you can be there on Halloween.
• Offenders cannot be present within 500 ft. of school, day care center, park with playground equipment (which is most of them), or swimming pool. §§566.147-150. Recently they added childrens athletic facilities and Missouri Department of Conservation nature or education centers (whatever they are) to that list. You may want to think twice, for example, about a motel with a pool. You may say, oh please! It’s just one night and who’s going to check? But my job here is to warn you about any potential problems you may face while traveling.
Missouri’s restriction against being present at or within 500 feet of a “park with playground equipment” is especially problematic for vacationers. If you think about that wording – it could be a 1000 acre state park and yet if it had just one playground anywhere, you can’t go anywhere in that park. It makes no sense, but it means most state or local parks are OUT. For all these reasons I have to give Missouri a travel rating of 4 thumb screws.
However, when it comes to national parks you’re okay because like most states, Missouri considers national parks to be “out of their jurisdiction.” Unfortunately Missouri has few national “parks.” Yes, St. Louis’s Gateway Arch is definitely a park and has no playground. What about Ozark National Scenic Riverway? It’s administered by the National Parks Service so you’re good there too. Mark Twain National Forest, which is extensive but includes few Ozark attractions, is definitely not a park. And speaking of Mark Twain, his Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal is a privately owned attraction, not a park.
Now that I have a summer home in Iowa and a winter home in Florida I travel back and forth several times per year, and one of the best routes for this long two day trip is south through Missouri. However the half-way point for this route is not in Missouri but rather at either Memphis (if I continue south on I-55 from St. Louis) or south of Nashville (if I turn east from St. Louis). Therefore I have been safely passing though without sleeping, hoarding my 7 days per 12 months for when I wanted to spend more time in this beautiful state.
For the vacation traveler you should know that most of Missouri’s travel points of interest including its many caves are in the Ozarks, in the southern half of the state, whereas the northern half is mostly wide open prairie. There are a lot of state parks up there and I’m sure they’re lovely but remember, you can’t visit any of them and I can’t camp there.
However, there is Mark Train’s Boyhood Home in Hannibal. In May 2023, that was my first stop after entering the state from Iowa on U.S. 61. It’s an interesting attraction and includes many restored original buildings occupied and owned by the childhood friends and neighbors who inspired Twain’s most famous characters. There are also two caves that Twain explored as a boy – he even graffitied his name in one of them.
In the northwest part of Missouri there’s also Jesse James’ family home, which like Twain’s home is not a park but a privately owned attraction. However, it’s little and not worth driving all the way over there unless you happen to be in the area anyway.
The Ozarks
Yes, the Ozarks are Missouri’s main vacation destination, and for the registered traveler there’s a bit of good news. Many of the attractions there are either federal (like Ozark National Riverway and Mark Twain National Forest) or privately owned attractions (which I will describe below), so you can avoid the whole state-park-with-a-playground problem. On the other hand, because it’s such a big tourist area get ready to pay through the nose.
My first road trip of 2025 from Iowa was to the South Central US with emphasis on Texas. That meant I traveled through Missouri twice – southbound and northbound. Both times I tried to spend time in the Ozarks. Southbound from I took a route through a part of the state I’d never seen before and enjoy the countryside. My destination that day was the Pulltite campground in Ozark National Riverways (remember – national park – I can camp there).
In part because Missouri is such a park-camping desert for registered citizens, I have sought the oasis of Ozark Riverways several times over the years and visited some of its attractions like Round Spring (which also has a cave), Blue Spring, Alley Mill and Two Rivers. And because it’s a riverway, all manner of rafting and canoeing are ready for you.
After staying overnight I headed south to my next major destination of New Orleans, but on the return leg of my SC US trip I was back in Missouri, this time entering at the far southwest corner from Oklahoma. My goal again was to report on the Ozarks, but before doing so I want to draw your attention to George Washington Carver’s Boyhood Home, a National Monument near Joplin, MO. I stopped there two years ago and was very impressed. He was a great scientist – and a great Iowan (he was a student and a professor at ISU in Ames) whose story was systematically minimized by white racist Jim Crow historians. Go find out the real story.
Entering from Oklahoma the Ozarks don’t start right away, but the westernmost tract of Mark Twain NF is between Cassville and Branson. That’s where I found a very nice Army Corps of Engineers campground. In a restrictive state like Missouri registered travelers should be on the lookout for Army Corps recreational facilities. Anywhere the Army Corps has built a dam they own the land around that lake and there’s a pretty good chance they’ve set up boat ramps and campgrounds.
The next morning on my way to Branson I stopped at Dogwood Canyon Nature Park, a private attraction on State Road 86. Looks nice but unfortunately it was closed on account of rain. While there I picked up some brochures that explained that this would be one of four attractions that I would go to but not go to that day, all owned by Jimmy Norris, founder of Bass Sporting Goods. The other three are all at Top of the Rock, which is a big gated mega-development where you have pay $10 just to get in.
Then you come to Lost Canyon Cave and Nature Trail AND Ancient Ozarks Natural History Museum. You can’t buy the tickets separately, only together, it’s about $100 per adult and it’ll take about four hours altogether. I hadn’t planned on that amount of time but maybe next time I’ll know what to expect. And that day the nature trail golf cart checkout stand was closed because even though it had stopped raining the 3 mile long trail was still slippery. PS the “world class” golf course is the fourth attraction. There is yet a fifth Jimmy Norris attraction, Wonders of Life National Museum and Aquarium, in Springfield.
I decided to skip all that until next time, and opted for a cave tour at Fantastic Caverns, just north of Springfield. The unique thing about this one is they put you in an open trailer and drive you through the tour. Then a short 10 minute walk takes you to the waterfall where all the cave water pours into the river.
It was now afternoon and I needed to find a motel in northern MO to set myself up for the next day. I did take US 54 so I could go through Lake of the Ozarks, which is very touristy and has a large state park for you to stay away from.
Now let’s tally up my number of days in Missouri. Southbound I slept one night, so that’s 2 days. Northbound I slept two nights, so that’s 3 days. Because the state law specifically says “more than seven days” (see top) I have exactly one overnight stay remaining in my quiver for the next 12 months.
Small
town notes:
Buffalo – Yes & no. West side good but on east side the crumbling
downtown fronts the old railroad.
Versailles and Tipton – good.
Fayette – has a small college, so
that makes it a “small college town.”
Macon – kinda okay
Kansas City
In 2023 I visited downtown Kansas City, rode their trolley and saw the City Market, Union Station and the National WWI Historic Monument & Park. It’s a national park and anyway, there’s no playground there so it was no problem.
Then I had Kansas City BBQ at Slap’s, but that’s in the other Kansas City in Kansas – so when I found a nearby motel I wasn’t “sleeping” in Missouri. Therefore even though I came back and spent a second partial day it was still zero days as far as Missouri’s registry is concerned.
St. Louis
In May of 2024, traveling from Iowa, I began what I hoped would be a four day tour of Missouri with the first night’s stay at a motel (with no pool) in St. Louis, but after that I was turned back by car troubles so severe that upon returning to Iowa ended up junking my car and getting another (used) Toyota Sienna. Now I have a car that’s registered and tagged in Iowa but my driver’s license is still from Florida. Neither Iowa DMV nor my Iowa sheriff’s department seemed to care about this, but what would Florida say when I returned there next fall? Well, a year later I can now tell you that Florida didn't care either!
But meanwhile there I was in St. Louis overnight at a really crappy Days Inn, so I made the most of it by going on the Anhueser-Busch brewery tour. Very enjoyable! Then the next morning I decided to live a little dangerously by going to the St. Louis Art Museum, which is justly recommended by all the tour books as a St. Louis must see. Unfortunately it’s located within Forest Park – which is another recommended must see, but not for us.
It’s a huge park and although I
didn’t see any playgrounds either while entering from the west or later exiting
to the south (after a stop at the Jewel Box), I assume there is probably one on
the far side of the park, half a mile away at the Visitor & Education
Center. I just stayed as far away from
that as possible. Upon entering the
museum I also checked the map thoroughly to make sure they didn’t have an
on-site playground or children’s rec area.
I am happy to report there are none, so if you want to follow my lead
and see great art while visiting St. Louis, do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment