October

The end of summer doesn't quite bring to the end my current segment of time. This year's summer I've been a frequent commuter between Minnesota and New Mexico.

June – drove to Minnesota to attend a child's graduation from a training academy. They remain children even after they become fully functioning tax paying adults.

July – remained in Minnesota to 1) visit my mother who had fallen in January and now dos best with a live body staying with her. 2) take the older grandbabies camping for a week 3) visit the young grandbabies who used to live in New Mexico and who I sorely miss, 4) stay with my mother so the current stayee could take a break and 5) see and visit with my children who may be parents, or not, and who I also miss.

August – back in New Mexico to continue on projects that, hopefully, will make the house I'm sitting more attractive to buyers. Currently said projects include chronically cleaning southwestern wind blown dirt out of every corner, off every baseboard and dug out of every carpet edge and upgrading a bathroom including replacing the toilet. Replacing some cracked tile & scrubbing the above dirt out of the grout is still ongoing.

September – back to Minnesota to babysit the sweetest little dog I've met and to keep gardens, really an artist's outlet, from totally fading while the owners took time to celebrate 30 years of co-living. I love you both and am glad I had a chance to help. The side benefit from this, and well worth the drive, was pigging out on garden ripe tomatoes, grazing on peak of ripeness raspberries and picking supper veggies minutes before preparing them. Hmmm! It was almost enough to pull me back to Minnesota forever.

October – this month is only a third done and it feels like it is already spent! Mother turned 98; I did not be drive back to help her celebrate since I've agreed to be the stayee for the winter. A grandchild will soon turn three and I won't be returning for his party. Parts I ordered for some additional repairs arrived today so between scrubbing grout, repairing damaged grout and sealing the places that are is now pristinely clean, I will be repairing some sadly neglected furniture fixing. Why my children have chosen to live with broken isn't hard to figure. While I won't bet the farm on it, I do think I've spent around 100 hours just taking care of minor irritations. Are any of you bothered by the gap between baseboard and flooring? I sit on the john and see a gap that has gradually turned from ok-its-a-gap to how-the-f**-could-the-builder-let-that-go!!! And I don't even know if the builder did let it go – but since I've found several things that did slip by I'll jump to conclusions.

The long and short of it is, I'm here on temporary so haven't been pursuing my own life as I could and I'm starting to feel pretty lonely. There has to be respectfully aged women someplace and I don't know where to look. Did browse the area craig's list once and found babies! It was a sad day in my life when I admitted to me that babies are no longer interesting. Does that make me old?

Must be older anyway since I've digressed. After the floor is finished and I'm done with repairs, its time to head back to Minnesota for a fun-filled winter of shoveling. And maybe I will finally be cool, as in temperature, I've long given up being cool.

Actually, I started writing this because of a supply run to Las Crucas. There is some major interstate road-building going on there so naturally I missed my alternate turn. While working my way to where I wanted to be rather than where I was, I read a billboard encouraging TB tests. I thought TB was pretty done however there is lots of migration around my parts so I did some web browsing and discovered there are close to a half-million cases of TB every year in Latin America and that 50,000 people or so die of it every year. There are many differences here in the southwest from north central.. Seems to me, TB potential is one of the more significant.

New Mexico Living -

I've been here a couple of weeks or so since the family left and it surely is quiet. I miss playing with or holding the grandbabies, I miss seeing their parents and having actual conversations. And I miss becoming more acquainted with my daughter-in-law. Oh well, I guess.

Since I feel motivated to give the kids something for occupying their house, I've started the last of the packing and cleaning. So far packing has been minimal, stuff like the bathroom wastebasket and a few stray toys they may have left behind on purpose. And I've started a small heap of stuff to bring with me when I see them next. Things like a partial package of diapers, a toy Forrest and I used to play with, things like that. I am glad to see his rope was taken, we played for hours with that rope. Sometimes it was a fishing line, sometimes a rescue rope and sometimes it caught his stuffed dog or fought off monsters. Even when he really, really liked a game and we played it a hundred times I didn't care. It put me in mind of how fast my own kids grew up and how soon once becomes be too much.

One of the other things I do is sweep the front sidewalk. Did I mention the wind tends to blow in the afternoon and sometimes its still blowing in the morning. On calm mornings I sweep in front of the house door and the driveway. Three days ago I started to sweep. I cleaned by the front door and partially moved a drift of door by the garage. That drift seemed fairly big and I was tired of walking through it on the way to Scout. Unfortunately it was in the afternoon so lots of the dirt blew back to around the house. After I made a path I quit.

Now its two days later. A good portion of the garage dirt blew away however I found pebbles in the lee of the car to clear away. And this time I decided to measure the powdery dirt in front of the main door. I easily picked up a quart and then swept the rest back under some nearby cedar bushes. It looked like my quart came from under those same bushes since I found bits of cedar debris on top of it. And it looks darker than the driveway sweepings, so I think I will try planting in it.

Humidity runs around minus 10% so water evaporates while I hold it. If I showered and then walked around the yard (6ft block fence folks) I'd be dry when I returned, covered with fine dust but dry.

Another task is dusting. All that wind blows the very fine dust in through every nonexistent crack a house has. Down here, you don't need an energy audit to tell where the leaks are, all a body needs to do is look for dust patterns.

Thinking of dust, Scout has the same problem. One of the first things I did after parking her in the house lee was wash the bedding. And for a few days there were no clouds of fine, air-choking dust when I moved covers to lie down, no coughing fits, no taste of clay when I breathed. Now I understand why all the homeless looking people also seem the color of dirt.

Alas, I hear the siren call of dust bunnies and must heed their call.

Charleston

Finally made it to Charleston and it was worth visiting. Coming from the northern coast, it was really easy to get into the historic part of town. Although I had trouble spotting the signs until I was on foot parking is plentiful and reasonable. The ramps and lots I saw are small and frequent and the ramps also contain public toilets. There are very few buildings from before the revolutionary war, most of the impressive stuff is mid-1800s or new and built to look like older.

The older part of town once had a defensive wall around it and the southernmost tip of the peninsula was tidal swamp like much of the coastline. Since the original settlers were french, it isn't surprising that many of the older parts of town had a foreign look to it. I found it surprising to see a look more closely resembling Quebec than New Orleans.

Originally the settlers built on Parris Island and then moved up the river and built again. When the governor decided that place would be too hard to defend, they moved to the current location. It was an orderly move. Charleston was carefully plotted and laid out. Green squares were made an intricate part of the plan and most of them still exist. Not only are there little green parks scattered around, there are many benches and walls on the streets waiting to be used. There are even free trolleys that loop around town on three different lines.

The older part of town is directed mostly to tourists. There are some shops, lots of restaurants, historical churches and buildings and then lawyer offices scattered around. Mostly I'd say it's residential with big, old, well-maintained houses and discrete apartment buildings, especially in what I think were wharf buildings. I'm guessing there are many more rentals than I saw because there are huge numbers of 20-something people using the green spaces. Everything I saw was clean; there's no trash blowing around, no graffiti, no loiterers and no obvious police or maintenance workers.

Move a little further up the peninsula and banks and hotels start appearing. They are built in keeping with the 1800s and with a french flair, but they have a new, sharp-edged look to them that the older buildings lack. Some of the older buildings have had face-lifts and most at least a good scrubbing. . Apparently it was customary for a plantation owner to have a town house for summer. Sea breezes keep Charleston cooler and healthier than a plantation in summer where the mosquitoes and gnats are supposed to be fierce. Course their slaves were still there.

Even though there weren't as many tourists as I prepared for, there were enough that I saw some kind of tour nearly every block. There are small tour buses, bicycle cabs that give tours, walking tours, harbor tours and horse-drawn wagon tours that were the most popular.

The first couple of wagons I saw were pulled by a single Clydesdale that made a funny sound as it walked by. Then I saw a pair of mules and they too sounded strange. When I took time to get a good look, I saw they were all wearing wooden shoes. Are they to protect the paving when the roads get really hot or to protect the horses feet?

One of the older buildings is the city market dating from 1841. Its made of brick and most of it is still open air. Lots of the vendors are blacks selling sweetgrass baskets. Originally the slave women made baskets as they had in Africa. Whether the original style was wide and flat I don't know, however what they made here was and the baskets were used for winnowing the rice after harvest. A plantation with 4-500 acres in rice would use lots of baskets so those women and their children would have perfected their skill. After the Civil War, some of the free slaves settled on the barrier islands, developed their own culture and continued to make baskets. I don't think many blacks can afford to live on those islands today though they do continue to make and sell baskets. Some are very elaborate and some are plain. All smell really good because of the sweetgrass that is the primary ingredient. The grass is worked into strands and coiled. The coils are sewn into each other with palmetto leaf cut into thin strips and pine needles are used to add color. They keep an even coil besides adding other colored material into it and then hide the ending so the buyer won't be able to see it. Besides the many sellers at the market, there are stands lining the highway where other women sell their baskets. All the baskets I saw were wonders of creation.

I could have bought a ton of stuff at the market. There was whimsical critters made out of spark plugs, nuts and bolts; nice collections of well-made jewelery; tacky t-shirts; hairbrushes with back and handle cast as cat, fish or bird; some appealing pottery patterned after items used in the 18^th and 19^thcentury; the usual local spices and mixes; and a collection of non-typical mementos – posters advertising slave auctions or offering rewards for runaways.

Charleston and surrounding area played a huge part in the slave trade. There was a port used principally in slave shipment and one of the few remaining original buildings is the slave market. This town is the only one I've seen that labels slavery as inhumane. Other southern cities have mentioned slaves or slavery however none have stood up and declared it as I saw here. The blacks here act like the ones at home and Charleston's acknowledgment may play a part in that. Most blacks I've seen in the south do not make eye contact unless they are challenging nor will they speak more than necessary if addressed. Not here, here the black people I've met expect me to acknowledge they are equal.

This visit I mostly looked at the outside of buildings as I walked down to the Battery Park at the southernmost end of town. There are lots of churches in town, some with the mandatory attached cemetery. One, painted a bright white, has a lighthouse instead of a belfry that was used into the 20^thcentury. The houses have street-side gates set in high walls that hide small gardens or driveways. Porches are everywhere. On the newer houses they are open to the air while the older houses sport shutters that block the sun and also block the view when if they are still used as sleeping porches.

All of the visitors I talked to were southerners themselves. One woman was from Atlanta and was going crazy over all the photo opportunities. Another was from Columbia SC, that's a bit like someone from Duluth visiting the Twin Cities. And, surprise, there were more french speaking tour groups than asian ones.

Total aside – a tow is going by –its dark and I can't see more than a small tug at each end. I wish they would go by in the daylight instead of the pleasure boats.

Later I compared notes with Joan, one of the camp hosts. Its been a pleasure to share views with another outsider. Once in awhile even I like to verify I'm walking on the same side of the street as other folks, at least in some things.

South Carolina

My plan was to bite the bullet and spend a few days visiting Charleston. I thought if I broke the visits up with 'wild' days, I could manage a few town days. Plans mean keeping track of time, as in days, and the longer I wander the harder it is for me to track the days so I wasn't too surprised to discover it was Thursday, when I thought it might be as late as Tuesday, and I still haven't visited my avowed destination.

One of the people I talked to at Thanksgiving told me it was worth visiting McClellanville, named after its founder McClellan. Its only a few miles up the road so I did drive to visit it. The roads in the southeast deserve a word – narrow. State highways are however wide a road be, 8-9ft probably, and they have a stripe down the center. There are no shoulders though often sides are wide and level; maybe shoulder paving is a northern thing for snowplowing. Secondary roads usually have leaves & pine needles along the edges so its really hard to see if the road is wider than the one lane that is typically visible.

The road into McClellanville had a stripe and yards that came right up to its edge. In many ways it was reminiscent of rural roads in Scotland where it was easy to see how a track through a cluster of houses turned into the road through a village. Places in Scotland had hedges defining the roadway, here there are large trees draped with spanish moss that created a winding tunnel leading through the older part of town.

Its not the kind of town a tourist would typically give a glance. I saw a very busy restaurant, an art gallery and a gazebo where the road took a turn to the left and headed back to the main highway. On right there is a pair of brick posts, they are huge on driveway gateposts in these parts, and a newish road leading toward water showing behind a mowed field. Turns out the field is someone's yard and the road is a small loop driving past McMansions.

Back at the gazebo I spotted and then took another road heading to a boat dock. There I found an informational sign about rebuilding the oyster beds. Once baby oysters are spewed out it seems the little buggers prefer to anchor on a fellow oyster over anything else so the area has a recycling program for oyster shells.

While I was reading the sign I heard a car stop behind me and a voice called out a greeting. An older gentleman, he didn't tell me his name however he did tell me he is 85, and his equally old dog, Zoe, had spotted me and came to talk. In the process I learned that one of the McMansions belongs to an Australian, and the one for sale belongs to a man who has taken up with a woman who lives out of town. None of the older residents, particularly his lady friend, like houses are on the point so he is selling his. I also found out there are damnyankees, he was a teen before he learned that was really two words, who buy in and then want to change things, yankees, who are smart enough to leave, and westerners like myself who don't count. Further, if I really was interested in learning about his community I needed to visit the museum and a cemetery.

The museum was close at hand and is smaller on the inside than it looks on the outside. However the gentleman running the museum was interesting enough to be a museum on his own. There were five initial families and nearly all the locals are related to more than one of them. Talking to him about his community and its roots that are clearly alive today started giving me a sense of the south that I have seen but don't understand. He is  directly related to one of the oldest plantations in the area and his quiet pride in his ancestors is part of his character.

We talked quite a bit about blacks and plantation culture. He wanted me to understand that there was deep respect for Negro culture and knowledge in spite of them being slaves. In the best sense, at least on his family plantation, the relationship was symbiotic. If it remained patronizing in the intervening years, it really wasn't much different than the peasant–landowner relationship of Europe. And while whites don't generally invite blacks to their table, blacks don't generally invite whites either and that isn't much different than other parts of the country.

He told me nearly all the houses in town were built by a family of blacks who are known to be the best builders around and it is a matter of pride to own one of their houses. He asked if I'd noticed that blacks tended to live in clusters off a ways. That goes back to after the Civil War when they were free and now had less than nothing. Most of them had been field hands and lived in plantation housing, ate plantation provided food and wore plantation provided clothing. Plantation owners couldn't farm without the blacks and they in turn couldn't survive without the farm so in many cases the plantation owner gave land to the blacks for houses. That gave both the blacks some place to live and gave the farmer a ready supply of labor. Listening put a personal view to history that the teaching of it generally lacks.

I decided to visit the cemetery. As with most towns there is more than one however my gent had given me directions to the Presbyterian one so that is where I headed. No sooner was I parked and out of my car than another vehicle pulled in an another older gent asked if he could help me. When I explained why I was there, he nodded in satisfaction, told me I should see it in the spring with the azaleas in bloom, and drove further in.

Most cemeteries I've seen consist of long rows of stones, some with flowers and some with fancy carving, trees here and there and paved roads. This one is a bit different. I drove in on a sandy roadway with a bit of crushed rock spread over it, through brick gateposts and parked in a wide spot under a moss draped tree. There are lots of trees and bushes with groupings of stones clustered under or around them. Each cluster is like a little mini-cemetery and the stones share family names.  Some stones are two hundred years old and are hard to read. Some places have a bench.

While I wandered around looking at generations of family all buried together 'family plot' took on a different meaning. Family going back two hundred years and being buried together is hard for me to grasp. Granted my mother has stayed in one place for a long time, however her parents' families had spread out and my father's family had also spread. My uncles and aunts spread out as did my siblings and many of our children.

The more south and east I explore, the more European it feels. I find myself relating experiences and bits of information to European history rather than my own and the more that happens, the closer I think I'm moving to an understanding that keeps eluding me.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

I've been staying at a campground at a lake on the Georgia-South Carolina border for several days. Georgia has been in a drought since July so the lake was very low. Naturally, that meant it rained while I was there. On the other hand, while it rained I used my very quirky internet connection.  After shear persistence and dumb luck I scored my current camping spot.

Friends, I am spending the next few days on the coast of South Carolina about an hour east of Charleston. Not actually the open sea coast, rather then inter-coastal waterway. The tide rises and falls, birds bob around and very large cruisers or sailboats glide past within touching distance.

While I was driving here, I found a good public radio station issuing from someplace in the state. Buried in the chatter was some Thanksgiving food talk. Seems like sea food would have been a much more suitable Thanksgiving food than turkey. Good old Ben Franklin started pushing turkey eating while he lobbied for it as our national bird.

I did drive by a couple of roadside sellers of crab and shrimp however I chose to stick with turkey and so purchased a frozen breast. There was no cranberry in the store I shopped, instead I found mountains of fresh green beans or gallon cans of them next to quart containers of french fried onions. Sweet potatoes and collards disappeared as fast as they were refilled. Snatches of conversation circled around the meat displays; most were discussions over ham, turkey or chicken and how many they could feed with their holiday budget.

One of my grandmas could make a pot roast that tasted like it was oven baked so I thought I'd give it a try with my turkey part. It thawed nicely, nearly unfrozen and still cold enough to be safe. I dug out the cast iron fry pan and found a bit of aluminum foil for a lid. Soon sizzling sounds came from the pan as the bird began to brown. I had just settled myself outside to read while it cooked when a 'neighbor' came over.

Seems like an extended group of family and friends, about 20, gather yearly at the park to celebrate Thanksgiving. I was invited to join the group, the campground hosts who were unknown to the family were also there so I too must join them; I did.

There was several turkeys, deep fried, baked and grilled, a beef roast, stew, collards, green bean casserole, two or three different types of dressing, biscuits, a couple different gravies, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, spoon bread, unknown casseroles and another table loaded with dessert. There was no cranberry anyplace nor were there any jello salads, for a stray second I missed Minnesota.

After everyone was done eating and seconds and take-home plates offered several times, some of the older guys dug out their guitars and a family sing-along started. I heard that two of the older guys used to be in bands and that the one younger guy currently plays in one. There were the usual Jesus songs and another bunch right out of the 60s. One of the guys sang “House of the Rising Sun”, a song my kids' father used to sing. Even after all these years I could hear him singing and he did it better than what I heard today.

Now the sun is turning everything to bronze, the no-see-ums have returned for supper and the party broke up as some folks left for family obligations. My turkey is cooking since I can better keep it cooked than raw.

Its been a good day – I hope you too had a good one.

South Carolina

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.

Itchy Feet

October is half over and I have just now returned to wandering. Maybe there's a wandering gene since being condemned to wander for forty years doesn't sound bad to me. I do wander more in one day than a nomadic tribe would travel however not far by current standards.

The Corp of Engineers have many campgrounds across the country. Since they are federal, my old-person pass lets me stay for half-price. And since the Mississippi is very managed, the Corp has several camping sites along it. My first stop was at one called Blackhawk Camp in Wisconsin. Its right on the Mississippi River and is nearly deserted; both are appealing.
The park is north of Prairie du Chien and south of La Crosse. This part of the Mississippi is like the area around Red Wing, MN with lots of sloughs, meandering channels and backwaters. I can see where the water has dropped in the last month or so and grasses have started growing at the edges of the islands. Knowing how geese chow down on grasses inside Minneapolis, I see this grass and think prime feeding grounds for migrating birds. In fact, this area is a wildlife refuge. Thousands of acres that are pretty useless for much else are protected.

Even without the signs I can see hunting and fishing are prime recreation. Every 5 miles or so there is a boat launch site; each I've seen had several vehicles in it and the road traffic seems to be either semis or truck and boat. Not all the boats are for fishing, some are decorated for hunting and even plain boats are used for it. The pair of duck hunters who enthusiastically showed me their haul used a normal looking boat. I must have made the correct sounds because I left with a couple of teal for supper. They are very small birds once they are dressed out (it was harder to see just how small while they were feathered) and the hunter told me true, they are very tasty.

Now I've wandered a bit further south to the end of Iowa. I've often traveled through the state however I've rarely taken the time to explore it. Parts along the Mississippi are quite pretty and I really like the bluff area. There is a section of NE Iowa, western Wisconsin, northeast Illinois and Minnesota's bluff area that were untouched by glaciers. No glaciers but heavy glacial run-off left the area fairly rugged and quite hilly, resembling the lower western hill areas leading away from the Appalachians.

River towns are similar to each other no matter where I've seen them. Each has some really old buildings, they are generally two or three streets deep, and they can stretch for miles. The Mississippi has railroad tracks running on either side of it using the same space as the towns. One little Iowa town has tracks running down the center of Main St. Every other intersection is shut off but there are still lots of unguarded crossings. Naturally the trains blow their whistles when approaching though the trains are hard to ignore since the buildings and street vibrate when they pass through.

The towns I've been through seem poorer than those in Minnesota or Wisconsin. However they all are trying to reinvent themselves and some seem to be succeeding. In an effort to keep people handy, lots of towns and counties have campgrounds that are consistently cheaper than Iowa state parks which are several dollars cheaper than Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois or Missouri's state parks.  Reasonable camping fees and pretty scenery will get be back to visit!


Currently I am in a 'historic county' in southern Iowa. I guess that means its old. While old buildings and houses don't particularly interest me, one blurb says it's house was part of the underground railroad. Now I'm going to have to look at Iowa history since I thought this was a free area even when it was a territory. I may even decide to visit that old house.