The Mighty Mississip

Sunday, August 20…

Tomatoes we bought yesterday.

Found the church house w/o any difficulty (altho I had a surprise afterward when I discovered the freeway was closed in the opposite direction). Full ward, good talks, nice chat with a couple folks. Secured a Sunday paper on the way back and quickly pulled out the sections Greg & I care about. The puzzle page had a Sudoku CUBE (top & 2 adjacent sides visible) where the three 9-number squares that meet have the same solution. Three days later I still haven’t solved that square (though I have completed 6 of the other 8 on the front face – I’m wondering if I’ve made a careless error somewhere).

Anyway, after lunch we drove north to the Lewis & Clark Expedition departure site at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. We've been to lots of other historic sites, but somehow this one felt more real. It was like, "Okay, I'm standing right where these guys set off..."

Sign at the site.

Missouri River to the left. This is where the flatboats,
rafts or whatever pushed off. And history may say 
they set out from St. L, but this is definitely Illinois.

Confluence view from the tower. The rivers both look
rather tame at this point. 

from the rocky Missouri side

We continued north on Illinois Hwy 3 to the Melvin Price Locks & Dam. If I’m remembering correctly, the Mississippi isn’t consistently deep enough along here for commercial barges (and there are certainly plenty of these on the river). We’re from Seattle, so we’re familiar with locks but it was still interesting to get details on this particular operation. We were surprised to learn that one river barge can carry tonnage equal to 58 semi-trailer loads. The visitor’s center offered lots more info in some excellent displays. (One had Greg trying to steer a barge under a bridge in a given amount of time. He almost made it.) From here we drove north, crossed the river into Missouri and headed south and across the river again to our campground on the Illinois side.

Entire Complex: dam, locks, & visitor's center.

Three barges fully in the lock, water rising.

Mighty little tug.

Barge 1 emerging upstream.

Postscript on navigating the Mississippi… Due east of St. Louis, an 8-mile canal w/ dam & locks allows commercial river traffic to bypass a shallow portion of the river that runs over a “chain of rocks.” (And our campground is actually located on W Chain of Rocks Road.)

 Parting shots from the campgound...

Sunset on the fishing pond.

The Three Amigos