I've continued to follow the Mississippi south, on the Missouri side, as far as St. Louis. Mostly the roads are away from the river. Where it runs close by, there are huge ugly plants surrounding small hamlet-like towns. Those towns seem even older than the river towns I've met further north. In general they are quite similar. The highway, running on higher ground, twists through town toward the river on what appears to be the 'best' road in town. Semis use it too so corners turn into a dance of who goes first. The big trucks seem to have it figured out, us strangers are notable for our caution and the young natives simply blast through intersections..
The ugly plants have enormous piles of coal or sand piled around them, usually on the up hill side with big tunnels of metal stretched over the road and ending in tubes hanging over the river. The riverbank is fortified with edging that looks bigger than railroad ties and sometimes a barge is tied under a tube.
So picture one of these towns. There is a railroad track nearby that is heavily used – train rumbling & whistles. There is a main road snaking through your streets – constant engine growling and the sound of air brakes. Some kind of plant nearly spills into your streets – gears grinding and sometimes squealing along with dust I could taste. Tugboats and barges pass on the river close enough to talk with the crew – chugging, lots of chugging along with slapping water if the wind is right. ALL the people I saw in this one town were acting like it was normal. I know, for them it is but I keep thinking about the assault on their senses and wonder if they are uncomfortable someplace quiet.
Around St. Louis the roads became a little confusing so I turned on my GPS, still a new toy, and asked it to send me to a park in Illinois. If roads came together at a diagonal, it would send me down a side street to cut off a block or two, and then if I wanted to take a lesser road, it would keep trying to divert me back to a major one. I'm guessing most of the problems I had are user errors. And it couldn't know the ferry it told me to take was closed for the season. What I really want is google maps in a hand-held with GPS connect. Eventually it did a very good job of routing me to where I wanted to go and keeping me out of St. Louis traffic.
Once in Illinois, I had the pleasure of driving on one of the prettiest and nicest roads I've found. The stretch I was on runs along the Mississippi from Alton to Grafton and then turns north to follow the Illinois River. Its four lanes wide with the Mississippi flanking one side and the white cliffs of Illinois flanking the other. It was late afternoon on a sunny, 72 degree day. The lower cliff-side was covered with brilliant reds and browns. Not only were the trees brilliant, the steep embankment under them was blanketed with the same sizzling colors. Sunlight sparkled on the river littering it with diamond points of light and overhead the sky had that intense blue some afternoons wear.
A few miles north of Grafton I found the state park I was seeking. The guy in charge is friendly, the sites are fairly level and the showers have really hot water.
There is a bunch of great sounding stuff to do in St. Louis and I thought I might stay a few days and visit some of them. First though, I wanted to drive south to Cahokia (Caw-hoe'-key-aaa), the remains of a city of Mississippian Mound Builders. Around 1100AD, when their city was at its peak, it had a larger population than London and was about the same size as Paris. 25,000 is a lot of people living in wooden huts and building huge mounds out of dirt. Their largest mound has a more volume than the Great Pyramid and was it constructed over a period of 300 years. Basket by basket people carried dirt to build that and many other mounds; I wanted to see for myself.
Armed with directions from the guy-in-charge, I headed back toward Alton and missed my turn. The road I was on also headed south and the greater St. Louis map I have showed the road I was on would take me where I wanted to go. So I continued and found a Lewis and Clark Historic Site instead. Well, I've been enamored with their Expedition for years so I stopped. Two hours later - - -. Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1803-1804 in the area. Since the Louisiana Purchase had not been finalized when they arrived at St. Louis, the Spanish governor would not allow them access to the Missouri River forcing them to winter and wait. Clark, a former military man, whipped the expedition men into a team and Lewis, the naturalist, spent his time gathering more information and buying supplies. They took a keel-boat and couple of tree-hollowed canoes to transport tons of goods. (And the only extra they had was some dried ink.) They “proceeded on under a jentle brease up the Missourie.” in May, 1804.
Keel-boats have always fascinated me and the reproduced one, made from following Lewis' sketchy plans, was of particular interest. Even seeing it I found it hard to visualize 20 men sleeping on board, actually on top of all those supplies. Staff is mostly volunteers who must spend their evenings browsing copies of Lewis' 13 journals. They are extremely well informed and wiling to share their knowledge with anyone. The info-guy there send me on my way with an annotated copy of the journal and new instructions for reaching Cahokia.
Fifteen minutes later I gazed at the Grand Plaza before parking at the Visitor Center. Granted I was still tired from the first stop, however I was disappointed with the informational video I saw regardless of the awards it won. The narrative is what bothered me. I think there are way too many “may have been used for” comments. Once again I spent hours in a museum this time looking for information to back up the video. I found very little that supported their assumptions.
Before leaving Minneapolis I read a book that questioned many assumptions made about other historic sites. Perhaps that book, added to my own skeptical nature, influenced my view. For one thing, they kept referring to de Soto exploring the area – as a free man he was hundreds of miles to the SW in Arkansas, and when he was here he was an Indian’s slave working as a trader and this site no longer existed. I wanted more than a throw-away comment about this site being in direct line with the earthworks outside Mexico City. I wanted more information about climatic conditions at the time this site was abandoned. And I wanted my old foot back so I could visit the wooden poled equinox calender. After another 2-3 hours looking at a very interesting museum, I was unable to do any outside walking.
When I return to check out St. Louis, Cahokia will come first.
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