It’s Tyme for Apples.
The Olde Tyme Apple Festival in Versailles started out in 1979 as a fall festival much like any other. Almost half a century later, it’s become so much more. The festival has grown to include a car show, a fiddling contest, live music, and hundreds of local vendors selling goods. Olde Tyme Apple Festival is centered around the county courthouse, an 1889 red brick and limestone building. The two-day festival drew in over 250 vendors and 33,000 visitors last year.
“Some do their class reunions at this time,” says Dina Dunklee, executive director of the Versailles Area Chamber of Commerce. “It’s honestly like a holiday for a lot of families. That’s when they get together.”
This year the festival is October 4–5, and visitors can expect to feast on caramel apples, apple turnovers, and apple cookies, to name a few of the many apple treats. Bee’s Knees Brewing Company in Versailles has crafted a caramel apple-inspired beer for the event. “It’s really, really good,” Dina says.
Aside from apples aplenty, the entire town comes alive with festivities. The local museum hosts tours, the Royal Theatre puts on an Apple Festival play, and contestants put their best “food” forward in the apple pie contest, a longstanding festival tradition.
—Natalie-Elizabeth Tan
109 North Monroe, Versailles
From Money to Marriage
For the average person, banks are simply a place for safekeeping money. But Danny and Stacey Morrison think outside of the deposit box. The couple owns The Vault, a late-1800s bank turned event venue in downtown Warsaw.
Stacey and Danny had always dreamed of owning their own wedding venue. The couple initially planned to build one on their property right outside of Warsaw but found it far too expensive, a crushing reality to face. When they discovered a bank for sale on Facebook, it seemed like a twist of fate. They purchased the building in October 2023 and embarked on a two-year renovation journey.
The venue, which opened in 2025, hosts a variety of events, from weddings to corporate functions.
“It’s a blank canvas for anyone to use the space,” Stacey says.
The Vault preserves many aspects of the bank’s historical features, including its three vaults, vintage safety deposit boxes, grand columns, warm-toned brick walls, and towering red brick arches in the main entrance.
Highlights of the building include massive chandeliers found throughout the venue, a speakeasy in the basement that is also the groom’s quarters, and a deluxe bridal suite. Danny adds that the venue houses two full bars, including one converted from a vault and the second from the space where the safety deposit boxes were kept.
“It’s deceiving from the outside. You can’t really tell all the cool things that are going on inside,” Danny says.
—Adeleine Halsey
TheVault200WMain.com • 200 West Main Street, Warsaw
Rivers, Ridges, and Rolling Bluffs
Echo Bluff State Park lives up to its billing by Missouri State Parks as the “Gateway to an Ozarks Experience.” Nestled along Sinking Creek and just a stone’s throw from the Current River and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, the park opened in 2016 for all to enjoy. It is a hub for floating, fishing, swimming, hiking, camping, mountain biking, and exploring the area springs.
It’s a frequent destination for nature photographer Danny Brown and his wife, Joyce.
“Joyce and I love to stay at the lodge,” says Danny. “We plan our visit to include dinner and drinks at Creekside Grill upon arrival. Early the next morning, I’m off to capture sunrise photos of the bluff while Joyce enjoys coffee from the room’s balcony. Later, it’s back to the grill for breakfast, followed by a hike. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a glimpse of the wild horses that sometimes roam the park.”
Choose from the lodge, the cabins, or full-service or primitive camping. Bring your own gear, or rent bicycles, chairs, tubes, wagons, cornhole games, or canopies from the lodge.
Local outfitters offer canoe and kayak rentals and shuttles. Bill Bryan, former director of Missouri State Parks, emphasizes the growing popularity of the park. “It’s the Ozark base camp Missourians have needed for many years, and now it’s here for all people and all time.”
—Barbara Gibbs Ostmann
EchoBluffStatePark.com • 35244 Echo Bluff Drive, Eminence
Smoking Out the World’s First Museum of Barbecue
During his decade as the food editor for Kansas City Public Television, Emmy award-winning writer and barbecue enthusiast Jonathan Bender noticed something was missing from the world of barbecue.
“I saw how communal and just diverse and interesting the world of barbecue was,” he says. “As I started to think about different ways to tell stories, I looked and there wasn’t a museum of barbecue in the entire world, and it seemed like Kansas City was the perfect place to remedy that.”
Soon after this revelation, Jonathan set to work renovating a space on the second floor of the Crown Center and opened the doors to the Museum of BBQ in April 2025.
The museum is interactive, encouraging visitors to engage all five senses, including taking a whiff of barbecue spices, touching wood used for smoking, listening to pit masters share tips, walking on a floor of sauce, having a go at the smoke ring toss, and taking a dip in the bean pit: a giant ball pit meant to evoke a pot of beans.
The museum features 10 interactive installations that walk visitors through each element of barbecue and the regions of American barbecue—North and South Carolina, Memphis, Texas, and, of course, Kansas City.
“We’re really trying to immerse you in the world of barbecue,” Jonathan says. “And this is an exhibit that was intentionally designed for all ages. So we get people from five to in their 90s, who all can enjoy something about what we’re doing.”
Jonathan’s passion for the cuisine is what makes the museum so special. He says the museum has welcomed visitors from all over the world.
“It really speaks to how much barbecue captures the imagination of people, both within the United States and folks elsewhere.”
—Adeleine Halsey
MuseumOfBBQ.com • 2450 Grand Boulevard, Suite 231, Kansas City
This article was originally published in the October 2025 issue of Missouri Life.
